Are H1 Tags still a necessity

I have been told that H1 tags greatly increase page rank since most sites don't use them. Is this true?

 

You should be using H1's where appropriate to structure your pages correctly. This helps your viewers and has the additional benefit of helping those pages rank for the terms in those headings.

 

It doesn't "greatly increase PageRank", but it certainly is part of a complete SEO strategy. Use H1 tags with targeted keywords and this will help your site rank better. But there are hundreds of other factors...

 

H1 tags are one of the top 5 on page things you can do to increase your SERPs.

 

what are the other 4?

 

One year ago, as a test I replaced all my H1 tags by H2 tags (now I have one H2 on each page) and I have not seen any traffic difference.
Of course if you are going to use H1, H2, ... tags you should use with CSS to reduce the "standard" font.

 

I see no difference but I still use them

 

Still a useful tag to emphasize the meaning of your content for Both Search Engines and Human Readers. Put your targeted keyword into this tag (Do not stuff the keywords ito this tag). H1 necessarily do not guarantee any top positions in serp.

 

Very important indeed. I would put efforts into making sure you use the proper headings on all your pages.

 

These tags are not used to increase traffic but work as part of SEO to increase page rank and Serps.

 

If Hx tags are used to differentiate 'significant' text from normal body text (i.e. emphasize it) and the existing hierarchy remains (i.e. all headings are relegetd by 1) then I can understand there being no change. Because teh document has roughly the same semantic mark up.

 

They are still necessary. They have helped me a lot.

 

H1 tags helps for site viewers only.
They only read little info like headlines. If no H1, H2 maybe they will skip your site.

 

It's not only for readers, it's a good SEO strategy.

 

Not always.
You can have this CSS classes, and your H1 will look very small:

h1 { font-size: 7px; }

Code (markup):

Or with this class, your H1 will be "invisible"

h1 { color: black; background-color:black; }

Code (markup):

 

I disagree.
Hx tags does NOT increase Page Rank.
Probably Hx tags increase rank positions (SERP), and with better rankings you receive more organic traffic.

 

h1 to increase page rank? not sure about this one.
but in SERP that my i agree.

 

I agree with using CSS to reduce the standard.