Explination of <h1> tag and how befinicial it is?

I just learned about the h1 tag today and how important it may or may not be. I'm having a little trouble understanding it though mainly because of the fact that it actually shows up on your page. Would it not make more sense having only what you want on your page and have the <h> tags only visible to spiders?

If anybody has any knowledge to share about these tags then please do, and also about the part where you make them invisible - I've seen so many different opinions, one site says you can change the text with CSS or make it invisible with CSS, then another says Google doesn't like it when you use CSS for the <h> tags .

The response I hope to get is that its ok to put invisible <h> tags in your page, saying where to put them and what to put inside them.

One last thing - I plan on putting these tags in the thread templates / post templates of my vb forum, anybody got any specific advice on this?

Thanks for reading my essay

 

Just use the <h1> tag in your html code and your good to go. It's in the code not visible on the page.

I use h1 sometimes and sometimes I don't. Depends on the site. I have sites that rank with it and without it. It's just one small element in the algo's.

Good luck to you.

 

So it goes in the head of the page then yeah?

 

The SE's are giving weightage to h1 tag because, it will look big and will catch attention of the user. But now, ppl are apply CSS to it and formatting it.. I dont think in future this will be a main criteria.. hmm.. am not sure but wondering !!!