Right, I understand the importance of backlinks, so for the last three months I have commented on blogs, submitted articles to digg, submitted my site to directories. I check my backlinks and show zero, well it only shows one from DP, so whats is this so???
Maybe most of them uses nofollow on link. I never post any comments on other blogs, but I got 248 backlinks from google. ( 1 month old blog , seldome update because im having exam! ) I don't know how I get them. Try using other website / software to check your backlink, maybe there's some error with the one u using?
Use top commentator blogs as well but make sure they are relevant to your site and when you post on blogs make sure the do follow and directories can take anything from a day to 6 months to show depends on the directory.