Hello, I hope this is the right forum to post .... I created a website a few months ago and i've delicately paid attention to all of the rules and tried to optimize my site as much as possible to be search engine friendly. I've submitted to dmoz and some other search engines. I've also tried to find as many free relevant directories as possible (only about 10) But I am still ranking pretty low.

So I have a few questions here:

1) Is there an easier way of finding more free directories relevant to my content or any others in general? Anyone have any suggestions?

2) Are robots.txt really that important if I want all of my website to be scanned by the search engines?

3) Is time a major factor in search engines? My website is relatively new, it was submiited sometime last year within September-November. I have used some program on the web to search for my page rank and I only came up as a page rank of 2. People tell me thats really bad and it frustrates me because I've tried to do a lot.

4) I think my link popularity is what's being frowned upon. Should I really consider listing my page in paid directories like Yahoo Local, Googl e local and other paid websites with relative content. This is going to turn out really expensive if I do that, but I want to give my website a lot of new exposure and I am new I can't afford to spend so much right now, not at least til i get a few clients.

5) Do HTML errors or any other errors within the website that cannot be noticed visually but with HTML checking programs lower your rank or cause you not to go up? I checked my page with one of them and it revealed about 60. But I check yahoo.com and they have 278, so is this really important?

Please I appreciate any help, this is frustrating, thanks.

Try this: http://info.vilesilencer.com/main.php?rock=seo-friendly.php

It's a list of free and paid search engine directories.

0.what is your website?
1.welcome to the internet this place has garbage and gold
2.i personally dont use a robots.txt file, make sure to use quotes in images even though i rarely do :(
3.your sites content will change and increase a PageRANK above that 2 especially if you can get more people to link to your website, its kinda one of the things that takes TIME and patients cause the web spawns in unexplainable ways
4.i woudnt pay a dime, especially if its hard to scrap for the cash, those dimes just help out overtures stock price not your pockets
5.the chances of being HTML complient are slim
6.if you need to make money on your site id try google adwords
7.may the force be with you
8.its almost time for bed ;) so get some rest :)

Thanks for the responses i appreciate it.

Is google ads better than overture? I tried using google ads I kind of liked them the thing I was worried about is that there is no limit to how much they can bill your card and that scares me.

I was looking to give overture a try but I use google way more I felt more comftorable with them for some reason

You can set up your adwords campaign so that it spends only a fixed amount every day. Check your campaign's name and click "edit settings". From there you can set the "daily budget".

I prefer google over overture because overture is kinda more expensive.

Firstly, if you do not have a robots.txt it is HIGHLY encouraged at least tell the bots where to go in each of your page's head. You can easily generate a robots.txt here if you don't know how.

http://www.webtoolcentral.com/webmaster/tools/robots_txt_file_generator

Time does take time, but it shouldn't take that long. My site was released in November/December and already has a PR 2. If link popularity is a problem, go a-forumin as I like to call it, place it in your signature, and join a few "large" forums, and have fun while still building that! You may also need advertising from a huge web site also. Here is a great place for search engines, and directories. Remember the Higher the PR, the better it is.

http://www.7in1web.com/submit.htm
http://www.7in1web.com/Search_engines.htm
http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php

PR isn't a big problem. I made a site and it went from 0 to 6 from the very first update without being in any directory at all. You just have to know how to find good links.