What is the skyscraper technique?
The skyscraper Technique is a link-building tactic that involves creating engaging content that helps get quality editorial links.
SEO specialist Brian Dean was the first to use the skyscraper strategy to reevaluate link-building tactics. The name of the method is appropriate because skyscrapers are distinctive in the skyline no matter where you are. The building will draw more attention the taller it is. Even when there isn’t much of a height difference, the tallest structure attracts the most attention.
Your writing should be as tall as a tower. In other words, you want your articles to be a few extra feet higher than those of your competitors if theirs are skyscrapers.
The article that users finally decide on delivers the most information in their opinion.
The skyscraper technique has 3 basic principles:
1. Find popular content that already has links to other websites.
2. Create better content on the same topic and publish it on your website.
3. Promote your content to the right people and let them know it exists.
The most important part: create something better than what is already there. Your goal should be to create the best content on the web on a given topic, hence the name of the Skyscraper technique.
It’s about creating the greatest content on a topic that stands out from all the others like a skyscraper stands out from all the others in a skyline.
Brian Dean himself says this: Have you ever walked past a tall building and said to yourself, “Wow, that’s amazing! How tall the ten tallest buildings in the world are?”.Naturally, You do not.
It is human nature to be attracted to the best.
That’s what sets this technique apart and gives you something to use for links for the sole reason that it adds so much value and depth to a topic that it makes sense for members of your outreach list to link to it. The reason this technique works so well is that you are taking something that has already proven to produce results and making it even better and using those findings.
It’s a common misconception that everything you do has to be innovative.
In search engine optimization, one of the most important things we can use to give us a competitive advantage is to know our competitors. And that means using data about what competitors are doing to identify their weaknesses and figure out what could be done better.
To be successful with content, you should not guess, and this technique gives you a blueprint on how to get results. Yet, there is a lot to keep in mind when using the Skyscraper technique.
Better content does not mean longer content.
There are many ways to improve a piece of content. – Very few can publish content and gain links and visitors. – If no one knows about your content, they will not link to it.
Promotion is such an important part of content marketing, and those who make the effort to distribute their content with an effective strategy are ultimately the ones who win big.
Why the skyscraper technique can be such an effective link-building tactic.
The challenge with many link-building tactics is scalability, as well as some uncertainty in the success you will see.
For example, broken link building is limited by the available options. To scale this tactic, you rely on other websites with broken external links that are thematically consistent with your website.
It’s a great tactic, but you are reliant on others to scale it, which means it’s rarely possible.
Another popular and proven tactic for link-building is digital PR.
And in many ways, there are similarities with the Skyscraper technique, but PR is usually about doing something new to gain attention and links.
And these results can not be compared to any other tactic, because many digital PR campaigns have already proven that they have the potential to get links from hundreds, if not thousands, of unique domains.
But PR cannot be learned overnight.
It takes the most experienced PR specialist to launch a story that scales like this, and that’s what the Skyscraper Technique entails.
It’s a proven process that allows you to scale link acquisition and earn quality editorial links by taking what’s already proven and making it even better.
When we boil it all down, it’s easy to see why it works so well, namely, because you are considering Google’s three most important ranking factors are:
– Content
– Links
The Skyscraper technique helps you meet all of these criteria by creating the best content on a topic and promoting it in a way that generates links.
The result is that this content ranks high in the SERPs, driving more traffic.
How to build links with the Skyscraper technique
Are you ready to learn a powerful link-building technique that can help you scale your efforts and increase your organic traffic?
We will walk you through the exact steps you need to take to plan and launch Skyscraper content and share some ideas on how you can turn the tactic on its head to find more link-building opportunities with your linkable assets.
Find content that deserves lots of links
Using linkable assets to earn links is not a new concept and usually refers to creating content that is so good that other people want to link to it.
They make collecting links so much easier. The problem, however, is that you have very few guarantees that your content idea will produce results, and often, it is informed guesswork.
You have to follow your gut feeling that the content you want to invest a lot in is something that journalists, bloggers and webmasters will want to link to.
If not, you are unlikely to get results.
The Skyscraper technique helps take the guesswork out of this because it is based on the foundation of already successful content. It the measure of that is content that has earned a lot of links.
And it’s easy to find the best content in your niche.
You just need to use a little common sense and skip the home pages and often certain product pages (but not always).
The Skyscraper technique is more about finding content that you can improve, and this is usually informational content.
This is a great example of content that has done well in gaining links.
This leads to great results.
And while you could improve on it, you should dive deeper than just the first top performer you see. You want to bank the pages that you can improve because we will get to that in a moment.
Finding inspiring content is about balancing the current performance of the linkable assets you find against the opportunities for improvement.
Analyze the Google SERPs
You can find the best-performing content by searching Google for the main keywords you want to rank for.
For example, let us say we want to find content that performs well on the topic of “home loans”.
We can run a search on Google and analyze the SERPs.
Investopedia ranks high in the SERPs with a page that has received 96 links from 51 domains.
This is another good way to find high-performing content that you can lift sky-high.
Create better content
Once you have found a piece of content that has received a lot of links (which tells you it’s popular), it’s time to create some great linkable content.
Quite simply, you need to create the best content on the web for your chosen topic, which means improving on what’s already going well.
Sometimes it’s clear what needs to be done to improve the content you already have, but often that’s not the case.
Still, there are a few general approaches that you can apply to most content. Even if it has already received a lot of important links. Regarding creating better content than your competitors, you can:
Create long-form content
Long-form content performs better on SERPs than short-form content. It’s not uncommon that you can significantly improve a piece of content if you make it larger.
Getting bigger and longer sounds easy, but many content creators opt for the bare minimum over what others are doing. So if you double down and get much bigger, you will often be rewarded for it.
Go deeper into the topic: focus on the details people are looking for.
If you are an expert and discover content that only scratches the surface of a topic, , a best practice is to enhance the content you already have by going deeper into the topic.
While this can often mean creating longer content, remember that going deeper into a topic is not just about putting more words on the page. It can also be about creating more advanced content if you are competing with beginner-level content.
Make your content stand out visually.
Content design is so important. Another best practice for improving content is to significantly improve the usability, appearance and layout compared to other content.
This is as much about first impressions as it is about usability.
You hope that someone will link to your content, and a poorly designed page can often create that first impression.
These improvements should not be considered in isolation from each other; you need to consider all the ways to make your content better than what already exists.
Promote your Skyscraper asset.
If you do not take the time to promote your asset properly, it’s unlikely to get links. It is estimated that over 10 million blog posts are published every day.
Once you have published an asset, everyone needs to know about it, including those who might link to it.
The Skyscraper technique differs from other link-building tactics that aim for reach in that the first step of promotion is to make sure you are promoting to people who have already linked to content similar to yours.
Locating Additional Relevant Prospects.
A skilled link builder will do more than simply contact people who have connected to the piece of content they are skyscraping.
Even if they didn’t connect to the original content, other people might think about linking to yours. Replicating the removed procedures for the top 10 ranked pages for the primary phrase or topic that your content is centred around and adding each relevant prospect to your outreach list.
