On Page Optimization Questions...<H1>...<H2>...etc

I have been doing alot of research into the <H> tags used both on the home page, as well as on the internal article pages of sites.

I have always heard, and began about 3 months ago to strictly adhere to the <h1> followed by <h2> then moving to <h3> for all of my titles, in that order, never going past <h3>. I assumed that I would be good to have a strict heirarchy in this fashion with targeted keywords in the respective titles.

However, after going around the web, and especially scoping out my competitors, it appears that there is really no reasoning behind this that I can tell. Some of the most popular sites do not have an H1, and may only have one <h> attribute on their page, yet they seem to be getting quite a bit of traction in the search engines.

A good example of this is the site http://www.1stquote.com/

They only have 300 incoming links, most of which are not high PR, and are consistently getting 20k+ SE finds per month, and from scanning the front of their site with Firebug, they only have very minimal <h> structure on their pages.

My site, http://www.etermlifeinsurance.net, which may be a train wreck for all that I know, has a much more defined <h> structure, has a very solid keyword density, has 150+ PR5 and higher links, and a good keyword rich domain name, but does not seem to be getting the same kind of play.

I know that I am rambling, but does anybody have any thoughts on what I am doing wrong/right/need to do?

One thing is that this particular site is only 2 1/2 months old......am I just being impatient???

Please let me know.....

The H in <H1> stands for header; they're meant to be used as such, with H1 being the main header, and <h2-6> being sub headers denoting sections of content, not for H1 to be the main keyword and h2-6 to be other keywords. The best way to do it is to use H1 for the header, and H2 for each of the titles, not to split the header between H1 and H2, that's just weird.

I understand what they are, and how they are used.

My main concern is strictly from an SEO perspective. I don't want to be wasting time on them as I have been doing just what you have said........<h1>for the title, and <h2> and on down for subsequent sections.

SEOwise <hx> tags are not the best use of your time. Use your <hx> tags for layout and clarity of content only and don't worry about how they affect SEO.

BTW, capitals are not used in html tags anymore.

Thanks! Can you see anything glaring on the site that needs fixing?