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Many search engines will show the Title and description meta tag when they return your page and it can really help bring in the right traffic.
Very. Inner pages subject matter tends to be more refined than the mainpage of the site, so they likely can grab the attention of a search better.
ie. If you ran a movie review site, you'd have to deal with vague, heavily used keywords like "Movie Reviews" and such, whereas if you had a review of, say, Seven Samurai, you'd be dealing with far more precise keywords like the title of the movie, Akira Kurosawa, et cetera, resulting in it hopefully getting a higher search placement with greater ease. Inner pages are an easy way to get viewers into your site generally.
I hardly worry about my mainpage because the keywords for it are too vague, and I lack the time and resources to manhandle my way past the corporate fat cats I'm competing with, but the inner pages are getting me dozens of articles on the first 10 listings in places like MSN and Google.