Ive got a website in a small niche with very few pages and little competition which have few backlinks. Ive submitted my site to several link directories and websites that are relevant to my niche. some of the websites are pg rank 5 all are higher than mine.my page rank is zero since it is new. How much will this help my website move up google? Stupid question possibly because I just have a feeling im over killing it or something lol because there are few competitive pages in my niche with little seo optimization and back links. will it drastically help?
Any link is better than no link. How long has your site been up and running? How long have you been building links to it? Remember that getting links for SEO purposes is something that takes time. You can build your links today, but you won't see the effect they have until much later on. I'd recommend you keep at the link building, not pushing it too hard, but just keeping it steady. You mention your site has very few pages, so if you have built all the links you can for now, focus on improving that content.
Backlinking only helps if you do it on good pr websites with traffic. If you overdo it then it'll have an adverse result for you. Perhaps try to comment on blogs relating to your niche or articles.
Very little. But any link helps. I wouldn't waste time submitting my sites to directories though. There are better free ways to build backlinks such as forum posting and blog commenting.
the only thing wrong with forums and blogs is that they are nearly always nofollow making it nearly pointless though?
how long can it take for them to have affect? im just going to keep adding relative backlinks of higher pr sites and keep adding updating my content until it goes first page
Well backlinking definitely helps, and in your case where there is almost no competition, as you say then you'd definitely see good rankings too soon, if your pages are well optimized for your keyword. But my experience says that directory links never show results soon enough. Directory links are only good to show a diversity of backlinks to search engines, but they won't help SERP. Moreover, backlinks from page rank 5 can show some movement to your site but not enough to reach the page 1 and if you're not on page 1 then you're not getting the traffic actually. What matters is... not page rank 5 site giving you a link from its inner page that stands at PR 0 which is again of no use. If you really want ranking then post backlink on pages that have actually a PR and NOT the PR of the website. One actual webpage PR 5 link is equivalent to hundreds of links coming from a PR 5 site's inner page that has PR 0.
Backlinks are very important for ranking a website on Google if the linking is considered natural by Google. In building links to your site, try not to do it too fast. Natural linking as defined by Google takes time. The cliche "slow and steady wins the race" applies fittingly to link building. Good luck.