This is a great point! My personal site is ranking 8th for ‘search marketing specialist’ in Google, while Google is only showing 2 links. We know that Google does not show all links it factors into the algorithm, but it shows that quality links are far better than quantity. To answer your question above about your links getting index, or displayed by Google. They will start crawling your links weeks or months before they are display. And keep in mind Google only displays a small percentage of the links they actually count. Back-link updates are generally sporadic and not always paired with PR updates. There are some great point above about diversifying your link building and integrating social networking. Create something people love to use and you will get all the links you need. Just site tight and keep building those links.
After that you can concentrate on writing some great content. Great content = a lot of natural backlinks which are the best and will really boost your rankings.