So your competition rates higher then you in the search engines for a specific term and you are wonder how am I going to get up there well don’t despair. Step one meta tag analysis go to your competitors site that is ranking number one for keyword word you want to be ranked number one for , then in your browser go to view source what you are then looking at is the code for your competitors website. With this you will be able to see what meta tag keywords and descriptions you want to be using on your site, what I would recommend is copying your competitors meta tags and using them on your site a few changes to title extra, atleast that way you know you are using right words to try and rank higher. Next step links to your site , witht those keywords and meta description you want to use them as the anchor text to your site when someone links to it . The easiest way to do this is to get some directory submissions done atleast a 1000 that way you get some decent back links using those keywords and descriptions. After that start doing the same thing using the same keywords and descriptions in social networking sites as these provide good high PR backlinks. If you follow this and do some on page seo of your site will find yourself beating the competition.
As far as Meta Tags go, and copying them from the competitor sites, I don't think that is a good idea. The remaining tips are well understood by most of us here