First some basics:
1. Make sure your site looks nice and has well written, interesting content.
2. Search engines read text, so don’t put your important stuff in images.
3. Make sure your site is standards compliant.
Now to the nitty gritty:
TITLE TAG
Make sure that the title tag reflects what your page is about. If your site is about Motor racing, but the page is about racing car tyres, then make sure your title tag says that – don’t use one generic title tag for all your pages. Don’t make the title tag too long and don’t stuff it with keywords
DESCRIPTION TAG
Again make sure that this describes this actual page. The title tag should consist of one, two or three phrases – not just a list of keywords. A bad example would be “racing car tyres, racingcar tyres, Bridgestone racing car tyres” A better example might be “Tyres used on racing cars – the difference between Bridgstone wet weather tyres and slick tyres” – the title should include important keywords or keyphrases but should also make a proper phrase.
KEYWORDS TAG
People who know little about SEO, generally latch on to the keywords tag as the most important thing. In fact, as far as Google is concerned, for ranking purposes it is no longer relevant.