I'd agree that very few websites are suggested with guidelines compliant titles and descriptions. I would say that even fewer than 1% achieve them. However, editors routinely rewrite them so that they are - that's part of the job. A website should never be declined a listing on such grounds.
Despite that, it's still worthwhile trying to do it right. Your listing suggestion will stand out from the crowd and is likely to be given some priority. We all like to do the easy jobs first
.
Far more important is content - good solid useful content, not content mill garbage, not affiliate link farms and not MFA sites. We also don't like to see blank or 404 pages because they haven't been written yet. If the content isn't there, don't link to it in your navigation.
Next comes usability. It doesn't have to be good but it mustn't be actively user hostile. If the editor can't find the content, the site likely won't be listed. My pet hates are mystery meat navigation and 'look how clever I am' flash based systems. The whole point of navs is to make it easy for the user to find stuff, not to conceal it. If the colour scheme is magenta on black, I'll put that back in the pool to wait for somebody with better eyesight to come along.
Then comes load time. If a site is apallingly slow, I'll put it back in the pool and work on something else instead. Somebody will try again some time later. It could be a lot later of course.
Internal broken links are frankly careless, but nobody's perfect. Broken external links could happen to anyone and we're evenmore forgiving over those.
Website age and sandbox time? We don't pay them any attention at all. Neither do we care about PR or Alexa rankings. I don't even run the toolbars to report such figures.
Is your website listable at all? To find out, critically evaluate it against our
guidelines and decide for yourself.