A very quick, and helpful answer from Matt Cutt’s regarding the age old question ‘Are meta keywords tags good for ranking’. The answer is simply, no, they are not. They are not used in the ranking algorithm and it is something you should not waste your time tweaking. Something that Matt does discuss is the customization of the meta description tag and how we should be using it to leverage more visitors from the search page.

Quick tip on how to write great meta description tags

A simple way to come up with a great catchy description is to look at descriptions in the top ranking ad’s for your keyword in Google. They sometimes offer great examples of how to leverage high volume, high quality visitors.