At this moment, Google especially ( Yahoo! is following Google I think in their link addiction madness ) ranks pages based on the # and quality of the links pointing to them. So, you really should focuse your time and energy on building sites that will get accepted to as many LLs as possible, which will result in a bigger # of backlinks. Other than a h1 containing your targetted keywords, some bold / italic text should not consume much of your time. Good luck!
