I can leave the H1 tag in, I just dont know where to put it. Its my header, and the website now is VERY ugly. Maybe I will just put the H1 in there above the image, and then use a negative margin.  Is that allowed?

I have a static website that I would like to retheme. I have the mockup, and its spliced. The website holds nice rankings right now, and I want to keep them in place. The one thing that will change with this new design is the header will no longer be text, but instead an image.  Is there a way to ensure googlebot still sees the H1 tag header exactly how it is now but use an image for the header instead?

I dont want any blackhat tricks that will get me banned. Just wondering if there is a simple way to have googlebot see the header as text (not ALT img txt) so the site does not appear to have changed at all. (It hasnt, I only am changing the graphics and colors of background, and header image for better branding.

This looks no different than http://www.text-link-ads.com/ to me.  Thats exactly what they rank for too.  In my earlier days of SEO I bought links from some of these link renting companies. I saw no positive or negative results from the inbound links I rented so I stopped using them.

Personally, I would steer clear of any company that rents links. Link turnover is not good and thats unavoidable when a company rents them out on a monthly basis. However I have no personal experience with this specific company, maybe someone else will chime in with some real life experience.