Do the header tags must be placed from top to bottom order?

[vtmoz]

Generally tags will be placed starting with h1, then h2, h3 and h4....

Some of our pages starts with h3 and h1 is placed after couple of h2 and h3 tags. Is this a bad placement which hurts in SEO?

[donsilvernail]

The H1 tag should define the most important heading while the H6 defines the least. If a page starts with an H3 I would probably look at what that heading is describing. If it is the main point of the content, I suggest changing to an H1 and so on to be inline with hierarchy of importance.

[Brandon. 0]

I would say that if the header structure is not adhering to a logical hierarchy, then the headers don't have as much integrity intuitively speaking. It could follow that the headers are not valued as they were intended.