There is one accessibility requirement that also happens to be among the best investments you can make in showing up in Google and in AI answers. It costs nothing, needs no tools, and is ignored on almost every site built in a visual editor.

Heading structure.

In Israel this is not a recommendation

The Israeli standard SI 5568 does not adopt the international standard one to one. It carries an annex of national changes, and one of them applies to every site.

Internationally, the criterion covering heading structure sits at level AAA - the excellence tier most sites in the world do not even claim. In Israel it was raised to level AA, the binding one.

The wording in the standard is plain: on any page with hierarchically structured text content, the headings shall be marked with a heading tag. Not “preferably”. Not “recommended”.

That also says something interesting about international testing tools: some of them flag a skipped heading level as “best practice” rather than an error, because internationally it is AAA. Here it is a blocking failure.

Why it matters to someone who cannot see the screen

A person using a screen reader does not scan a page with their eyes. They cannot glance down and spot where the interesting part begins. Their way of skimming is the heading list: the reader can present every heading on the page as a list, and from there jump straight to the right place.

A site whose headings are marked correctly is a site with a table of contents. A site whose “headings” are merely enlarged, bolded text is, to that person, one long block of paragraphs with no signposts at all.

That is the difference between skimming a page in ten seconds and listening to it from beginning to end.

And where Google and AI engines come in

Now the part that interests every business owner: a search engine and an AI engine read exactly the same thing.

They do not see your design. They do not know this text is large and bold. What they see is structure: this is the main heading, these are the sub-topics, and this passage sits under that topic.

When an AI engine composes an answer and looks for a source to quote, it is looking for a unit of content that answers a question. A page with a clear hierarchy hands it that unit on a plate: a heading that is the question, with the answer underneath. A page without one hands it a wall of text, and it will prefer a source that is easier to understand.

That is why we treat heading structure as GEO work at least as much as accessibility work. The same action, two returns.

Four mistakes that repeat on almost every site

The fake heading. Text enlarged and bolded in the editor instead of being defined as a heading. Identical to the eye; a paragraph to a machine.

A skipped level. Straight from an H2 to an H4 because the H3 “looks too big”. The fix is to change the size in the design, not the level in the code.

More than one H1. Common when a logo or site name is defined as the top heading, so every page announces two main topics.

An empty heading. A heading element with no text, usually left over from a design. A screen reader announces “heading” and then falls silent.

How to check it in a minute

Install a browser extension that lists the page headings, or ask your developer to export the list. Then read it aloud without looking at the page.

If it sounds like a sensible table of contents, the structure is sound. If it jumps between topics, repeats itself or contains blank lines, there is tidying to do. That is a one-minute check that returns both a binding requirement and a page that is easier to quote.

What it sounds like when it works

The clearest way to understand this is to compare two heading lists from the same services page.

When it does not work: “Services”, “Click here”, "", “More information”, “Contact”. Somebody listening to that list learns nothing about the page. It contains an empty heading, a call to action mistakenly defined as a heading, and not one topic.

When it works: “Building a brochure site”, “What the package includes”, “How long it takes”, “What it costs”, “Frequently asked questions”. Exactly the same page, and now you can jump straight to the question you care about.

Notice that the second list is also precisely what you would want an AI engine to see. Every line is a question a customer asks, with the answer underneath. That is not coincidentally the shape of a good FAQ section, which is why the two work together: a correct heading structure makes the page navigable, and an FAQ section makes it quotable.

In short

Heading structure is the rare case where the regulatory requirement and the commercial interest point in exactly the same direction. In Israel you are obliged to do it anyway, and whoever does it properly finds they have also done half of their GEO work.

On every site we build the hierarchy is checked automatically on each build, and a skipped level fails that check. Not out of pedantry, but because it breaks silently and it is far cheaper to catch immediately.

To be clear: everything here is general information, not legal advice.

Want to see what your site’s heading structure looks like? Let’s talk ↗