Google will index you without any links, if you just submit your site via Google Submit Site.Backlinks can help your website get indexed faster.
That is how google works. It caches pages gradually but it shows them slower than that. After many visits to the same page, it starts to appear in the index.
Submit your site to one of thos big artcicle directorys and google will crawl it because it's got such high PR and if you have a link in your rescource box you should get indexed quite quickly. Also try posting in Forums with a sig file.. Ive heard that they are indexed more frequently because they are updated so often. If you've got a budget try buying a high Pr text link on a top site for a month and you'll certainly get indexed with no work on your part!
Just keep on submitting to seo friendly directories.It will benefit you in short and in the long run.
A lot of times its just the luck of the draw. I have had 2-3 backlinks and get indexed in under 4 days in the past. While other times you can have 20+ links and it takes over a week. If you get links on pages that are crawled often your chances of getting indexed sooner goes up considerably.
I think backlinks hardly ever bring real traffic unless your links on blogs of communities where people are looking for more resources but when it comes to link exchange, it doesn't really bring in a huge amount of traffic. It seems like that only purpose of having Back links is PR and search rankings.
Well you may use bloggers and post your links alongf with content and google will index them all in 24 hours!
Get deeplinks if at all possible. Don't just get links that point to your home page. If you get links to other pages besides the home page you will see your site getting indexed more quickly.
You should not submit your url to google! You only have to have a link from a high pr website pointing to your site. It's better that way.
To get indexed, it will be quite simple. My websites usually get indexed in a day without any backlinking. The ranking is the part where you need to worry about backlinks. You should get as many backlinks if you want a lot of traffic to your website. You should find different webmasters to exchange links and do article submissions. Backlinks from high authority sites carry more weight. You can try the free backlink generator in my signature for a start. hope this advice helps. If you do have any questions do PM me.