The tag a screen reader would announce as a heading is there. The heading itself is blank.

Example sentences that fill the space until the real paragraph is written. A crawler counts words and ignores meaning, so this copy needs to look busy. Swap it out before the page ships and nobody will remember it Example sentences that fill the space until the real paragraph is written. A crawler counts words and ignores meaning, so this copy needs to look busy. Swap it out before the page ships and nobody will remember it Example sentences that fill the space until the real paragraph is written. A crawler

What a blank heading does to readers

An H1 earns its place by naming the subject. An empty one gives a screen reader a heading to jump to with no label attached, and gives a search engine no phrase to tie to the topic. Templates produce this when they print the heading wrapper regardless of whether the CMS field has content in it. CSS can also cause it, by hiding the text inside the tag.

The fix

Write the actual headline, put it in the H1, and keep the sections below at H2 and H3. No good headline yet? Draft one before the page ships. A blank rung in the outline is not a placeholder. It is a hole.