<H1> or <H2>

Now I have been using <H1> to put my keywords in, but I find this visually unappealing. Would this hurt my PR if I switched to <H2> or <H3>?

I understand google uses link popularity to mostly determine PR, but considering other search engine sites also would this hurt me, and make me drop in rankings for keywords?

Comments are appreciated for input and if anyone has tried this, or know of the effects. Thanks!

Nothing appart from backlinks effect PR, The only cause of PR is backlinks.

You can set the size and weight of your h tags with CSS.
So you can continue to use h1 tags where you want and set the size in your styles

You can edit how your headings will appear via css.

Thanks.

I agreed ,,.. but we should not forget SERP, which is MAIN thing through which you can call visitor from SE.

And H1 tag cetainly play major ROLL to effect SERP and to maintain KEYWORD DENSITY..

Thanks

As already stated, h1 can be defined how it appears via CSS.

Although f you are trying to have all keywords in hi tags it could affect you in a bad way - and make it appear like keyword stuffing.

An alternative is to have one main h1 tag and then sub-categories with h2 or h3 tags etc.