h1 vs. h2 & h3 in SEO?

This is something I can't seem to find an answer on...I know that header tags are an important puzzle piece in SEO - but do you really have to H1 all of your article headlines? H1 is WAY too big and it looks atrocious if you have a long title. Can't you achieve the same benefits in SEO by using H2 or H3?

 

you can style h1 with CCS, you know

 

Good point the way my site skin is set up - H1 was reserved to display a section within a box that has an image background and a border. It's going to be really interesting to figure out how to edit all instances where H1 is already called

 

I would not use H1 both for the section name (if present on the page) and article headlines at the same time.
You need to keep in mind that h1 h2 h3.. must build a link a structural hierarchy of your content.
I would use h2 for the article headlines if I were to design your website

 

Thanks!! that means I don't have to do anything, which is even better news

 

Except that it would not hurt if you formatted your h2 tags. Otherwise you may be surprised to see that Firefox and IE will pick up different font size / margin / padding values for it. Other than that, you should be fine using h2 for your titles.

 

Clive, I did notice that - it seems as though there's a line break before and after the tag. I'll look into that.

 

That's right. To remove the linebreaks (I don't see why you would need to do that) Add

h2 {
 display: inline;
}

Code (markup):

 

yup, if you having problem in the size of heading just use the CSS rules. me i would recommend the externall CSS which use style heading..

 

awesome, thanks for the help. I'm a complete newbie with CSS, but I love it so far.