A small sucess, and more questions

I was thinking of putting something online for a long time, but it was only by finding this excelllent forum that I had some vision of what to do about it

So last week I bought a domain name for 2 bucks, learned how to use wordpress, loaded in some of the articles I had already written, and am now trying to figure out the backlinking and off site SEO stuff. And my site is on page one of Google!

I did this - used Traffic Travis and the adwords tool to find a phrase that seemed to have low competition and then got a domain name of that phrase. Unfortunately this is where I made a mistake - I forgot to check the option for exact match, and the keyword i thought would get 8000 search per month only gets 70. but had already bought the domain. But I don't think its very commercial anyway so i am using this site as a learning experience.

But now i'm stuck, the thing is in Traffic travis and any checker i try, says i have zero backlinks. But i can see several of the links I have put around the web. I have backlinks on a hubpages article, and in a few social bookmarks and directories. I backlinked some of them days ago. Is this normal? and how come i rank in google if i have no backlinks? Also i noticed i'm number 4 in google UK but number 8 in australian google. I don't know how to access USA google from my country, how do i do that?

I'm just trying to learn backlinking stratagies, but if I don't get any feedback I dont know if I am doing the right thing

Use Google ad preview tool to view your ranking in a particular location. Also, clear out your caches or check the tool in private browsing mode if you want accurate results. Sign out of your gmail account as well.

As for checking backlinks, use ahrefs.com and majestic seo. They are pretty good backlink checkers and free to a certain extent. Google these tools if you don't know what they are.

I think you need to wait couple weeks for them to show up, keeo adding unique content then hit up Leith for the weebly interlinkining phenomenon onhere

really a couple of weeks to show up?

I checked those tools, still shows up as zero backlinks

Worrying about things like your backlinks showing up in some random tool will hinder your success.
I don't say this to be an ass, but to tell you that these are superficial things that you need not worry about.
The only thing you really need to concern yourself with is if the backlinks you create are indexed by Google,
and that the work you are putting into your backlink campaign, is having positive effects, which it is.

Hey as long as you're ranked you're good right? I think you need to wait a while

Yeah that's true, not to get hung up on it.

But mostly I am learning backlinking, so I want to try out all the ways of doing it, eg articles or directories.

And then see how are the backlinks doing. And now they are zero, even if I type into google link:mysite

Just seems strange. By the way, my keyword is how to wakeboard video, and I am at position 8. My site is the one with EMD of that phrase, if any one wants to check it out. Can't post links yet.
I don't think I'll ever get past you tube to rank first for this, no matter how many bl I have. As I say I treat it as a learning experience, I'm into wakeboarding so I did a site, don't think it's very commercial lol

Ok so it's still zero backlinks and now slipped back to number 10 in google. I'd just like to know what I'm doing wrong?