A Google publication on SEO mentions the <h1> <h2> etc tags.
Are these a high priority for search engines do you think?

I'm not using these tags for my current site at all, instead I'm using a CSS class and <span> because I am still using tables for layout (yes yes I know I know... I'm an internet Luddite ) and <h>tags force a carriage return at the end which pushes the bottom of my container down, which I often don't want.
Is there a way to use <h> tags without the hidden <br /> function?

Things higher up the page are supposed to have more importance with search engines and I guess the H1 and H2 tags are likely to be fairly near the top in most cases and probably contain something that would be expected to be important.

I guess make sure anything you want the search engines to rank more highly put as close to the top of the page as you can.

Yes, heading tags are important in SEO. Important regarding SEO: Spidering a site for search engine significance is finding keywords that repeat throughout your meta information and your content. So, if in your meta information you have a keyword listed like "web hosting", then you want one of your heading elements to say "web" "hosting" or "web hosting", so that the repetition is caught by the spidering of the site. The same rule applies to your content, so by repeating key phrases in your content along with headings will really help your SEO page rank.

If you are worried about the heading pushing your content down two far then set a line-height in your css like this:

h1,h2{line-height:1.7em;}

You can adjust the 1.7 downward if you need it tighter or upward if you need more space.

also make sure you only have 1 of those tags on each page, one H1 and one H2, more than that will hurt your SEO.

Jo Ann, trying to impress with her SEO knowledge. See, you understand it just fine.

hahaha ya little bits and pieces of it lol very little

Thanks Eric, works like a charm.
Thanks for the info, everyone.