If you want to start with the beginning, probably the first thing is the URL of the web page. This must contain the keywords that your page target, and it's better to have a static URL than a dynamic URL. The URL can be composed by 2 or more words (long tail keywords) and is better to use plus (+) between words than underscore (_) or space.
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You don't think keywords help at all? Do you have anything that supports this or explain why you think so?
for long tails, no gaps is best of all. For example MyKeyWord is better than My-Key-Word i've found. Optimise the page titles to match the search term as well.
Definitely blog description and meta tags are very important for search engines to index ur site. I am using All in one SEO plugin for my wordpress blogs and it is very good and easy in putting tags and description
Google webmaster central had a blog post about it some months ago - they are ignoring the meta keywords tag altogether. But I think keywords can still be useful for other search engines so it is better to put them in.