Content aside, title and description tags are one of the most over looked and under utilized SEO techniques I have seen.  They can also be one of your most powerful allies in dominating in web search.

Case in point, I was working on a SEO project for a small business website.  The website itself was nice and clean.  They were an established business that had been around before the Internet so their website already had authority and some great links pointing to it.  Their biggest problem however was their titles and descriptions.