Structuring a Page with Headings for Readability

How to Structure a Page

How you break up a page with headings affects both how easy it is to read and how well it’s understood by search engines and screen readers.

The Basic Hierarchy

• The page title acts as Heading 1 automatically — don’t add another H1 anywhere in your content, even if it’s tempting to use one for a big section intro.
• Use Heading 2 for your main sections — the major “chapters” of the page.
• Use Heading 3 for sub-sections within those main sections.
• Don’t skip levels — e.g. going from H2 straight to H4 without an H3 in between. Screen readers and search engines rely on the sequence being intact; skipping a level breaks the logical outline even if it still looks fine visually.
• If a sub-section needs further breaking down, use Heading 4 — but by this point, consider whether the page itself is trying to cover too much and might work better split into two pages.

Why It Matters

• Readers scanning the page can quickly find the section they want without reading everything top to bottom.
• Screen reader users can jump between headings to navigate the page structure, rather than listening through the whole thing linearly — a broken or skipped hierarchy makes this much harder.
• Search engines use heading structure to understand what a page is actually about and how its content is organised, which can affect how (and whether) it ranks for relevant searches.

A Quick Check

Before publishing a longer page, read just the headings on their own, top to bottom, ignoring all the body text. If they don’t form a sensible outline of the page by themselves — like a table of contents — it’s worth restructuring before you publish.

Working Within the Page Template

Most pages on the site use a default block template — laid out in columns, with built-in page navigation. This template is largely fixed:

If you’re not sure whether your role can edit the template, check with an admin rather than trying to force a layout change — some structural settings can affect other pages using the same template.

If your role has the right permissions, you may be able to adjust the template or column layout for a given page.

If not, you’ll need to work within the existing structure — adding your headings and content into the provided columns and sections rather than rebuilding the layout from scratch.

Either way, the heading hierarchy rules above still apply regardless of how the columns are arranged visually. A heading in the left column and a heading in the right column should still follow on logically from each other in reading order (H2 → H3 → H2 → H3, etc.), not jump around depending on which column it happens to sit in.