Hmm, at this point you'll have to work to catch up but.. Did you do the starter islands? It is easy to miss and you can get to level 7 or 8 just running that before you do the first main city. You used to start on them but some people begged to avoid them and you now get dropped in the main city with a hint from the prophet about going back and a quest giver just outside of your starting place that will send you off to them.

If you missed that you are likely behind. Have you cleared every map so that all the little icons are white instead of black? Any icon that is black indicates that there are still open quests at that spot.

Did you join the fighters guild, the Mages guild, and the Undaunted? Have you run the 4 man public dungeons. There are 3 of them per main leveling area. 1 in your alliances area and 1 each in each of the other alliances area's and you can wayshrine to those dungeons.

When traveling and doing quests have you focused on just doing the quest and avoided fighting all the mobs along the way?

Have you been to Cryodiil. You don't have to go there for the PvP. Find a campaign where your alliance dominates the map and go exploring and do the quests you can find there.

All of those things will help you not only be the correct level but be over level. My first character was level 17 when I left the first main zone and my second character level 18. The second one had spent a day or so poking around Cryodiil and picking up general experience.

Thanks guys... i will go back and do what i had missed