There are no shortcuts really. At least none that won't come back to bite you later on. It's probably best to develop your site in a manner that is natural for users and compliant with web standards. There are 'code validators' you can run your site pages through to help make sure there are no glaring errors.

This is my take on this an please read the latest Google SEO guideline (The PDF version which is somewhat difficult to find).

Use <h1> tags to emphasize primary keyphrases.
Use <h2> tags to emphasize secondary keyphrases.
Use <h3> well, you get the picture by now.

Do this consistently across your site.

To the response that mentioned the devalued importance of the <hx> tag, well, maybe it's time to wake up.

as my experience,h1 tags helps ranking so much. So I put it on all of my websites.

[QUOTE=thanya;1038692]Listen. I just wrote you a two page piece but everything I wrote crashed: just as I tried to send my response. I really don't like writing in Word when I'm in my few, various Forums I frequent [OK JUST HERE!], but that would be a good habit to get in. Having the text you wrote instantly come back up for the times this stupid machine doesn't work. And at the same time as having Internet woes, I don't really don't feel like writing over and over again the things I've written about for the last hour, it seems. There's gotta' to be buggering up between this HP beast and Microsoft war going on non-stop. Things want to open, then they don't want to open and other things are trying to open other stuff ... AHHHHHH It's like I only had three megs of ram again.

It's 1:30 in the morning in my neck of thise great, seasonally transitional wilderness I'm a part of and I'm grateful.

OK. this is the synopsis of my earlier thoughts on this interesting headings debate:

A. Use <h1> when appropriate, paticularly when it can emphasize keyphrases and their dynamic variations; including but not exclusive to abbreviations, synonymous keyphrases, plurialization, prefix and suffix transitions and variables, obvious use of linguistics, altering verbe tenses, acronyms, lexicons, morphology ... any other web content apparently intelligerntly produced.

Then you have the <h2>. Think of it like the secondary keyphrase Introduction Channel (some ethical SEOers call this "Going for the Long Tail" SEO approach (auxilliary keyphrases such as regionally specific [by country]) ie .com vs .ca.

Niow, let's look at the <h3> tag ... heck ... look around, you'll figure heading tags out pretty quick.

Keep things orderly. Important is mportant, you don't have to overkill it in just the <Hx>s. [Note:I have been known to "over-optimize sites, intentionally, in order to best assess my webpage positions amongst the top keyphrase competitors, and then, to reduce it while still growing, slowly and cautiously]. Smooth but irregular a bit, unpredictable yet predictable. Let the search engine know that t'll find really good new stuff when it determines itself the next crawl.

Craft your headings, don't just search engine them. Make them visitor interesting, part of the the reason why they showed up. This is effective on-site search engine optimization.

Work the headings! Work all the optimizable web page components.

Proper structure plays a role in SEO. All heading tags should be used in the proper order to achieve maximum exposure, but they are not the only part of the formula. A large portion of the formula involves linkbacks. The more linkbacks you have from sites that also have a high number of linkbacks for the same keyword, the better your search engine results will be for that particular keyword.

Linkbacks? Are they in the same family as, check this out checkout, humpbacks? BACKLINKS, you mean Backlinks or incoming links or even inbound links. Check this out family ... linkback hunting is for checked out SEO sissies.

Google has changed its algorithm in the past one week or so. My PR has taken a beating. But some keywords got good placements. Really I don't know what is happening.

None of us really know either and the search engines, well, they're kinda nuts themselves.

Sounds to me like you must have recently been playing around with SEOing your stuff and your keyphrase rankings are changing because very little of such significance happens in the search engine ranking mechanism in one week, lately.

Right, h1, h2 and h3 tags are all important for on-page SEO. I would recommend you to read an article from seomoz titled 'search ranking factors'

You can place only one <h1> and many <h2>,<h3> etc.
<h1> tag is must to be placed (like <title>). It is the main subject of the page.