But include meta tags in your document for the engines that do use them. It will significantly increase your rating. There are many, many different meta tags. The description tag provides a summary which appears when your page comes up on a search. It will generally use the first few lines of text at the top of your page.
Meta tags are to be placed inside the head tags.
This is why it is not a good idea to have a banner at the top. The first paragraph should be heavy with keywords, but not so heavy as to make it difficult to read or understand. If your site is heavy on graphics and short on text, then you need to use meta tags. Otherwise, you have very little chance to come up on the search engines. Consider the meta tags as tools that make up for a lack of text on your site.