Ah! - you asked the wrong question.
You asked "tell me about meta tags" when you actually wanted to know "tell me about search engine optimisation", to which, as Bushfiva points out, meta tags are essentially irrelevant.
So my answer won't have been helpful ...
Here's how I get a very good Google listing for my services as a contract software engineer: put a popular free public service on my site which lots of people use and have linked to over the years ... and I was there before Google anyway.