Strange thing with Google ranking?

[Webman]

There's this site for a local business. At first, the site was ranked at the very very top of Google, very keyword-dense meta tags. Then the site disappeared, but the sitemap page is still indexed and shows in the top 10 on Google for keywords.

Was this site banned by Google just because of keyword-dense meta tags? That's the entire point of SEO! How do I get this site's home page back on Google's top 10?

[monfiserv]

If the sitemap is still ranking well, you made a mistake with the home page. The page is not banned, but probably penalized. For more concrete information I'd need to analyze your site. By the way, the "entire point of SEO" is not stuffing keywords into meta tags. That's, although still a part of the SEO work, a thing of the past. SEO today involves a lot more.