OK now I am baffled - question from new to SEO

[Iwrite]

I didn't even notice this forum till today - and now have to add robots.txt to the list of SEO things I need to research. I put my website into the validator and found that I got errors related to what I think is the cascading style sheet of the website which is hosted. Does it matter?

I also got error on my title for the website - yet that seems to get picked up on search engines?

Is error on meta tags just that I haven't yet understood how to make a meta tag correctly? I read somewhere meta tags no longer matter.

Does any of this matter in optimisation?

Does the fact that the thing picked up stuff mean there is robots.txt on my site by the host already and if so, why is it saying error on so much of the stuff that is 'off the peg?'

I think I understand a robot as what searches the site and picks up what to indes on a search engine; but what exactly do I do to have correct robot.txt?- there has to be a website out there that tells me that someone can point me to?

Thanks
Iwrite
(LOL I write better than I SEO so far!)

[Romeo]

... there has to be a website out there that tells me that someone can point me to?

... or you can point yourself by just asking google for "robots.txt". The first searech result on top (must be good SEO there ...) is a link to www.robotstxt.org.

That site has everything you need to know (it isn't that much, of course).
And the effect of robots.txt to SEO is less than minimal (if not using it to lock your entire site though).

Regards,
R.

[Iwrite]

Hi - thanks - I did already do that, but probably should have said 'good resources.'-how would I know if what I found was the best resource if I know nothing to begin with about a subject! It might be good SEO but does that mean that the content is appropriate to my particular needs? I think that was the link I found. Anyway if all I need to know is minimal that is fine by me!

Iwrite

[Romeo]

... yes, you are right, just a number one result does not make it a good resource just by that.

In this case, however, it is.

If you have looked at those few pages there, you know nearly everything about the robots.txt (which is basically a simple list of file resources a search engine should not access) and get the feeling that there are not much impacts on SEO (except you set it up to exclude vital pages of your site from the SEs, "Disallow:"ed pages cannot rank, of course) ...

Regards,
R.