The Backlinks Worth Paying $2,000 For (w/ Ilias ISM)

E1210: What makes a backlink worth $2,000? Ilias ISM joins me to explain which links he pays for, how he finds them, and why pages that rank and get real visitors often matter more than domain rating alone.

Ilias is a software engineer turned SEO who builds SaaS products and runs an SEO agency. We break down his link-building process, the Claude Code agents he uses to find backlink opportunities and write outreach emails, and the strategies he sees working as Google and AI search change.

In this episode:

- Why Ilias would pay $1,000-$2,000 for a backlink from the right page, especially one ranking in the top 10-20 for a valuable keyword.

- How to evaluate backlinks based on page-level search traffic, relevance, referral clicks, and placement, not just domain rating.

- His starting filters for backlink prospects: 500-1,000+ monthly organic visits to the domain, relevant top pages, and no obvious signs of a link farm.

- How he finds thousands of link-building opportunities by combining competitor backlink overlaps with sites ranking for target keywords.

- An overlooked research tactic: analyze the pages linking to your competitors, then study which topics bring those linking pages traffic.

- What gets replies to backlink outreach: short, direct emails with a specific request, offer, or reason to include your product.

- How he replaced much of a complex link-building software codebase with Claude Code, a database, and tools the AI agent builds as needed.

- Why a $50 GitHub sponsorship that sent referral traffic and branded searches became an early SEO breakthrough for him.

- What nofollow links, unlinked mentions, brand searches, and social media coverage mean for search visibility.