The myth follows old-school rules: Every page needs exactly one H1, followed by H2s in order, with H3s nested properly beneath. Skip a level and you've damaged your SEO. Multiple H1 tags will confuse search engines and tank your rankings.
Before pragmatic analysis, an e-commerce site selling office furniture would contort their product pages into rigid structures. The H1 held the product name, feature sections became H2s even when emphasis didn't warrant it, and specifications got forced into H3s regardless of visual design needs.
What changed in modern rendering: Search engines parse semantic HTML and understand document structure through multiple signals beyond header tags. They recognize main content areas, navigation, sidebars. Your header hierarchy helps but isn't the primary structural signal anymore.
After understanding current priorities, that furniture site uses headers for actual document organization and user scanning patterns. Sometimes two H1s make sense for split-panel layouts. Sometimes they skip from H2 to H4 because the visual hierarchy demands it for readability.
The technical reality: Header tag hierarchy matters most for accessibility and screen readers. Search engines care that you're using headers to organize content logically, not that you've followed strict sequential numbering.
Focus on whether your headers help humans scan and understand your content structure. Search engines follow that same logic now.