Although copy in meta-tag description and meta keywords have less relevance in SEO these days due to the abuse of keyword stuffing, the proper keywords in the Title-Tag is still critical for SEO visibility based on the need to match user search words and phrases with the appropriate web pages. This chart is provided by SEOMOZ.org and provides great insights into the placement keywords.
In fact, it has been said by many SEO experts and authors that the Title-Tag id THE most important piece of meta-data on the page. The search engines typically give the most weight to the meta-data in the Title-Tag.
The above graph represents the weight given by Google to the keywords (no more than 2 per title/page) and their position (far left) in the Title-Tag.
Collectively, meta-data (title-tag, description attribute, and keywords) is still important for SEO, about 15% of total on-page and off-page weight when combined with matching and supportive HTML page text, so don't ignore it.
