EroticySteve

Google won't necessarily ban you for jacking someone's tags. Neither will they necessarily ban you for jacking someone's content. Both are classless and non-productive ways of getting ranked. Some companies that do SEO for clients copyright their meta tag work. You make your own call on infringing on rights.

Duplicate content will get picked up eventually, however, most people who rip off sites rip off portions of content and these often go unnoticed by spiders.

There are formulas and parameters that some design by. I can tell you that if nothing else the least you need to do for good SEO is write, clean, legible and coherent text that offers value to the reader. Babble and blabber rank well when you consider other factors such as traffic and linking.

It is vitally important to maintain a keen eye on your link strategy, keyword density, keyword relevance and links from sites of similar content in a simiilar context.

That's the most emprical view of SEO that I can offer.

__________________