Google still uses the description meta for the blurb when it lists the results of searching for you (or your product name). You may have noticed that if you search for a particular business or product, the target site is usually broken out (home page plus a few other pages that are commonly relevant) with a description rather than a bit of excerpted text with the search terms highlighted. And the keywords are still considered, but only after the page content.
There are only two things that really matter (apart from users clicking on your entry in the search results — popular results will get better rankings over time): quality content and quality inbound links. You can help a little by supplying a site map and using the other Google webmaster tools, but they can only give you a boost after you've worried about the content.
"Doing SEO right" is almost exactly the same thing as doing accessibility right. That is, along with making sure that the words are there, you need to make sure that the structure of your HTML supports the information. Using header tags correctly (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) makes a big difference, as does using good <alt> tags for your images. If you are concerned with regional queries (let's say you're a doctor or dentist, or have a bricks-and-mortar business), then using microdata tags can help a lot when people are searching from nearby
Try not to do everything on one page. Your landing page should sketch things out generally, but try to keep each of the pages in your site on-topic.
Don't worry too much about "keyword cramming"; the indexing code is pretty good with synonyms and word variants for general searches, and when people are searching for exact words (a quoted search) they'll be looking for something that's either going to naturally match your page or would make your site an irrelevant result (and that could lead to them adding you to their personal block list, and you definitely don't want
that happening too often, because it'll become part of the algorithm eventually). If you are creating a product site, mention the product in the content, but try to avoid sounding like one of those idiots who constantly refers to themselves in the third person.
The occasional repost (with attribution and permission) is okay, but don't let it become a habit. There were quite a few high-ranking sites that basically based their entire business model on reposting content from elsewhere (eHow, Mahalo,
et al), and they were thoroughly squashed by the Panda update last year — almost immediately after Google introduced the personal block list for Chrome and discovered that a
huge number of people found the sites and their practices objectionable. Basically, if you continually add content that is taken directly from (or weakly reworded from) content that has already been posted elsewhere, you go to page 80,972 in the results (if you're not blocked entirely).
Beyond that, though, it's mostly a matter of creating valuable, original content. Not only does Google look upon that with a fond eye, it's the best way to get other people to link to your site. And it's not nearly as much the number of links that matters as who is doing the linking. How you go about generating quality links depends a lot on what you and your site are doing. If you offer personal services of any sort (like, say, a wedding photographer), then getting your clients talking about you — in a good way, of course — can create a lot of buzz. Other sites may get a big boost by announcements or articles posted to influential aggregator sites like YCombinator's Hacker News for tech and startups, Reddit (in the appropriate subreddit if you're specialised), and so forth, or in influential forums. You won't get immediate link juice, since the links you post are often tagged "no-index no-follow", but you'll get the right people looking at and talking about your site, and perhaps using your product (if you have one). A link or two from someone with a relatively high Page Rank will do an awful lot for your own rank, and you can't really pay for that. (Well, unless you have very, very deep pockets or a team of, um,
persuasive minions telling people that they have nice houses and it would be a shame if something were to happen to them.) If you have friends and associates/colleagues, even if your relationship is only online, who seem to be doing okay on teh Googles, it might be worth asking for a mention. And don't forget the social approach — having a presence on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc., with links to your site and regular, meaningful activity can lead to a lot of "lazy word of mouth" through likes and so on.
And whatever you do, don't fall for the trick o' the week. Anything that seems hacky or even moderately dishonest may work today, but you can bet that whatever hole you're exploiting is going to be plugged tomorrow. Google (and Bing) depends on the quality of its search results to get and keep users, and it depends on the quality of its users to attract and keep it's actual customers — the AdWord advertisers. If the eyeball count drops, then the ads are worth less. If you do anything to mess up their perceived value to their users, and thus to their advertisers, they're not going to take it well at all. A one-day trip to the front page is not worth banishment, and once you're sent to electronic Coventry it takes an awful lot to get back on Google's good side. So no black, grey, or even slightly off-white hats, okay?
(By the way, AdWords works if you are doing anything commercial. It's not that Google ranks their advertisers higher in return for the money they're paying, but that advertising click-throughs count as positive feedback in the search results. If your site would "naturally" be on page 14, but AdWords gets you on page 1 alongside the big boys and people choose you instead of them, your results will be ranked higher.)
