If you’ve come across the phrase “skyscraper technique” in your research and want to learn how to execute it successfully, then you’ve come to the right place! The skyscraper technique can go a long way in helping you optimize content to surpass competitors’ rankings and dominate search.
In this blog, Ignite Visibility’s SEO Project Manager, Anthony DiSalvo, will explore the skyscraper method and how to use this technique to your advantage for supercharged SEO.
What You’ll Learn
- What Is the Skyscraper Technique?
- What Is Skyscraper Content?
- How the Skyscraper Technique in SEO Helps Rankings
- Why Should You Use It?
- How to Build Skyscraper Pages to Generate Backlinks
- When Should You Use Skyscraper Pages?
- Skyscraper Technique Tools
- Pros and Cons of Using Skyscraper Techniques
My Expert Opinion on the Skyscraper Technique
A big part of good SEO is developing high-quality content that soars above the competition. You want content that will bring real value to your audiences while encouraging others to share it, indicating to search engines that your content is the best, and that it should be in front of users.
This is where the skyscraper method comes in as potentially one of the most effective link-building strategies you can implement today. Using this technique the right way can establish your brand as a leading authority on a topic, which can subsequently help your search rankings while also earning you more backlinks.
To get the best results from the skyscraper technique in SEO, I recommend you start by looking for content around a topic that tends to get a large number of backlinks. Once you find these topics, you can start developing superior content and establish it as authoritative. From there, you can begin outreach to get people to link to your content, supplementing your on-page SEO optimization.
What is the Skyscraper Technique?
The skyscraper method entails building top-tier content that trumps competing content to gain more high-quality backlinks and boost SEO. It’s a technique that Backlinko’s Brian Dean developed. Although it has a storied history of success going back to 2015, the skyscraper link-building technique has evolved to incorporate tactics like AI keyword identification and repurposed content.
According to Brian, “It’s human nature to be attracted to the best,” and he believed that the same principle applied to websites trying to build backlinks from other websites.
This is achieved by Googling a key term you want to rank for, analyzing any existing content that currently ranks for that term, and then writing something better. Or, as Brian describes the process, “Finding the tallest ‘skyscraper’ in your space…and slapping 20 stories to the top of it.”
What Is Skyscraper Content?
Skyscrapers are long-form evergreen pieces of content that are typically 1,500 words or longer. A skyscraper will target a viable search term or trending topic, and serve up in-depth content designed to attract more traffic, shares, and backlinks.
To fully function in skyscraper link-building efforts, it’s not enough to simply create evergreen content—you must also curate it and make any necessary updates based on new keyword trends and search engine algorithm changes, keeping it consistently relevant to reflect the ever-evolving SEO landscape.
These pages include content that builds off a specific topic and includes all relevant information on the same page. This is what is commonly referred to as the hub and spoke or the pillar page technique. This is where you build a landing page based on a big overarching topic or keyword with a large search volume. From there, you can produce related content on new pages that link back to your topic.
How the Skyscraper Technique in SEO Helps Rankings
Think of the vertical nature of an actual skyscraper and you’ll see the correlation between looking up at a tall building and the vertical scrolling required when viewing skyscraper content. From an SEO standpoint, skyscrapers can be valuable as Google favors authoritative content.
When implemented properly, this strategy has been very successful for marketers across industries. However, others have lost a lot of valuable information from poor internal linking, which has led to creating orphan pages that are hard to build backlinks to.
This is where skyscraper pages can make their comeback.
There are many kinds of content that can thrive through skyscraper link-building strategies beyond basic text, including video, infographics, and podcasts. In any case, you need to take steps to produce the very best content in your niche to get ahead with this technique.
In adapting the skyscraper technique to your marketing efforts, keep in mind the many ranking factors influencing Google today. While keywords and links are still critical technical components, contemporary SEO emphasizes the user experience.
For example, you need to ensure your content adheres to Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, create a mobile-responsive experience to appeal to mobile-first indexing, and produce content based on user intent (i.e., where the person is at in the sales funnel and their objective).
Thankfully, the skyscraper method is fully compatible with new content developments, including the need for more personalized content and AI-powered content. Using these innovations to your advantage with skyscraper content could further cement your success in search rankings.
Why Should You Use It?
The skyscraper technique has become a proven framework designed to help boost your site traffic. Using this approach, you can:
- Build high-quality content and create more engaging posts.
- Increase your social shares and blog comments.
- Increase your overall backlinks to your posts.
When Should You Use Skyscraper Pages?
It’s best to utilize the skyscraper technique when you have a ton of information on a broad topic.
You’ll also want to make sure this information easily flows and can consistently be improved and updated.
Think of a topic like digital marketing. This is a field that is regularly evolving from its previous standards and practices.
However, this can also be used for topics that have an incredible amount of detail like personal finance or public health.
One of the top reasons to employ this strategy on your site is to pick up more backlinks. This is actually what skyscraper pages were originally designed to do.
Finding and securing backlinks for your skyscraper pages is typically easier because sections of your page can be repurposed and refreshed more easily than other pages. This allows you to frequently update and improve your content so that it aligns with the backlinks you are trying to acquire, as well as present a larger sphere of content that can link to your page.
Building backlinks is just one of the benefits of skyscraper pages. Here are a few more:
- Quick refreshes: With so much content in one place, the skyscraper technique makes it easier to locate and make adjustments to sections, rather than entire pages.
- Centralized information: When everything is in the same place it’s easier for a user to follow the story and understand your content. It also supports the use of jump links, which are great for both Google crawlers and user experience as information can be quickly located.
- Rank for more keywords: With all of your top keywords and questions on the same page, you can rank for more terms and gain a ton of authority.
How AI, Voice Search, and Multimedia Content Are Shaping Content and SEO
As you incorporate the SEO skyscraper technique, you must consider how new content developments will impact your strategy.
For example, generative AI has infiltrated search engines through Google’s AI Overviews, which summarize multiple content pieces to give users the information they need without leaving search results. At the same time, those results pull from and cite top content pieces, potentially driving traffic to your site. AI is also critical in providing you with insights into your SEO strategies and helping you continually optimize them for better results.
Meanwhile, people often conduct voice searches for various items using platforms like Siri and Google Assistant on mobile devices, along with voice-activated devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home. These voice queries are often more conversational and generally different in nature than conventional online searches, making it important to rank for these queries as well.
People also integrate multimedia content into the search experience. Just consider the use of visual search to upload an image from mobile devices to search engines, which could then provide more information about the content that image contains.
These elements would all influence how you do the skyscraper method as you attempt to appeal to AI, voice search, and multimedia search results.
How to Build Skyscraper Pages to Generate Backlinks
1. Find Link-Worthy Content
The very first step to implement the skyscraper technique in SEO is to locate content worth centering your strategy around.
An integral part of this will involve looking for keywords to target and the top results for those queries.
There’s an art to choosing the best keywords for a high search rank.
Your keyword should be:
- Relevant to your brand and the interests of your target audience.
- Valuable with regards to traffic.
- Applicable to the buyer stage you’re looking to reach.
For instance, an ecommerce brand in the electronics space might sell laptops and want to target top-of-funnel audiences who aren’t sure which laptops to buy. In this case, that brand might see what the results are for a keyword like “buyers guide to laptop,” which will bring up several top pages.
Based on these results, you can then find the most popular content ranking for them and incorporate what works into your own even better content.
Find the Best Content Around the Keyword
Luckily, there are several tools that allow you to research backlink information for any given topic or keyword.
In 2024, advanced tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Surfer SEO offer real-time competitive analysis and AI-driven insights on backlinks and keyword opportunities, ensuring skyscraper content stays ahead of the competition.
Analyze Google SERPs
The next step in the process is conducting a comprehensive analysis of SERPs for the keyword(s) you are trying to rank for. Here are some of the main data points to consider when looking to increase keyword positioning:
- Domain authority
- Page authority
- Internal linking structure
- Structured Data Markup
- Backlinks
- Content-Length
- Semantic Keyword Analysis
- Keyword Density
- Video Content
- Readability
Also, perform a search of your own for keywords and see which results come up first. Results appearing in AI Overviews and other similar top-ranking positions could indicate their quality.
2. Create Something Better
At this point, you’re ready to create something that is superior to the content that already exists. After you find the term or page you want to compete with, analyze that content and expand on it.
Remember— a well-researched piece will reassure people that you are knowledgeable about your niche.
If there’s anything you can add to enhance your existing post, take the opportunity to do so. Be sure to add links to expand on related content on your site. Although this is the page with the most pertinent information, it is essential that you give users the opportunity to explore your website and learn as much as possible.
You should also try to develop content that connects with people conducting voice searches using platforms like Alexa and mobile devices. Remember, voice search queries tend to be more conversational in tone and tend to appeal to informational terms that people enter when looking for more details.
Create Your Content
Once you have your headers and content in place, you’ll want to add elements that make your content stand out even more. These will be items like custom images and graphics, quotes from industry experts, and fresh examples for your users. Anything to enhance UX is a big factor in the eyes of Google.
Creating the best available content for users improves your likeliness of securing backlinks and building authority. Also, the skyscraper method should comply with Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, which dictate that content must showcase experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness to bring real value to users. E-E-A-T aligns with Google’s Helpful Content Update, which made it so the platform is most likely to rank content that users find truly helpful and useful.
Don’t focus solely on text, either—try to develop a variety of content that can fully implement the SEO skyscraper technique. Video, infographics, quizzes, and many other types of multimedia content can help you rise above the competition as you learn more about how to do the skyscraper method. Additionally, keeping up with the latest web design trends will visually stimulate your audiences.
The more engaging and varied your content is, the better it will perform.
As you build your content, make sure it provides viewers with a good user experience (UX). Ensure it’s optimized for mobile devices to appear optimized on every type of screen, and integrate accessibility features like alt text for images to further extend its reach.
3. Reach Out to the Right People
With your skyscraper link-building content ready, it’s time to begin outreach to build backlinks and overall authoritativeness.
Find Relevant Outreach Opportunities
Writing blog content is only half the battle. To promote your post, you’ll need to do some link-building outreach, often referred to as “blogger outreach.”
This entails finding other websites that regularly publish articles on a topic that relates directly to your content.
When researching relevant opportunities online, you can try limiting the date range or leveraging features like Google’s advanced search operators.
Send Outreach Emails
One of the biggest challenges with outreach is getting a positive response from the recipient.
It’s often a numbers game as so many reputable websites get numerous outbound emails per day. And since these emails generally follow a similar template, yours can get deleted quickly if it doesn’t stand out.
What determines whether or not your email gets opened depends on the following factors:
- The email should look like it’s coming from a real person, not a corporation.
- The message must be sent from an email at your domain.
- The subject line needs to be interesting enough to compel the reader to open it without being deceptive.
- The email must reach the right audience based on audience segmentation, with each email corresponding to the appropriate stage of the buyer’s journey.
If you’re successful, you’ll bring in plenty of great backlinks, and even more traffic to your blog.
Use Social Media
Another way to reach out to potential audiences for sharing is social media. For example, you can connect with potential partners on LinkedIn to link to and share your blog posts or other content.
As you grow your audience on various platforms, your followers could also share your posts on their own profiles and help your skyscraper content spread.
Reach Out to Influencers
Another trend you can take advantage of for the SEO skyscraper technique is influencer marketing. Using this strategy, you could connect with influencers in your niche, from nano-influencers with maybe a few thousand loyal followers to mega-influencers with millions, getting them to promote your content.
Certain influencer marketing tools can help you locate the right influencer for your business and pitch a potential partnership.
Regardless of the strategy you use to connect your content with your audience, work toward building trust and personal branding to get the best results. Your content should be unmistakably yours and establish your brand as the dominant authority on the subject your content covers.
Skyscraper Technique Tools to Use
There’s no shortage of tools you can use for developing skyscraper content and getting the most from this strategy.
Some of the many tools available include:
- Semrush: Use this platform to help you identify some of the top-performing content in your industry or for a specific topic, which can help you determine how to do the skyscraper method to build better content. You can also use this platform’s Backlink Gap tool to assess competitors’ backlinks and identify opportunities for yours.
- ChatGPT: AI content generation is another great way to efficiently create skyscraper content. While you shouldn’t let generative AI tools like ChatGPT write all of your content, you could use it to outline your ideas for a more exhaustive blog post or another content piece.
- Ahrefs Content Explorer: View site and social metrics to locate the best topics in your niche to cover.
- Hunter: This comprehensive email outreach tool can help you develop and effectively manage your outreach strategy, with an email finder and verifier tool along with domain search and campaign management feature.
- Zoho: For AI-driven analytics that can inform your strategy, you might consider Zoho Analytics. This tool can help you analyze everything from marketing to sales with Zia-powered analytics that allow for predictive analysis and smart interpretation.
Pros and Cons of Using the Skyscraper Technique
Pros
- You have the luxury of choosing content pieces that are already relevant, popular, and have a lot of links to improve upon.
- There’s a strong possibility that the sites that published the original article would be interested in your updated piece as well.
- Most of the initial research has already been completed for you in the form of your original post.
Cons
- You need to determine if you’re truly adding value to the new piece of content you’re creating.
- Identify whether there’s a real need for an update, or if your goal is just trying to outdo a competitor.
- You run the risk of adding content to a piece that doesn’t need any improvement and ends up being expanded for the sake of being longer.
- There’s growing competition for high-quality backlinks as more businesses seek to dominate search.
- If you produce low-quality content, you risk certain algorithmic penalties, making it important to create consistently great and helpful content.
- Going too far with AI-generated content could also penalize it, which is why you should provide human oversight for all AI content.
Implement the Skyscraper Technique With Ignite Visibility
The skyscraper technique is not a new concept. However, it’s become increasingly popular among marketers as it helps them get ahead in search engines through rich, helpful content.
To make full use of this technique for your business, you can trust the experts at Ignite Visibility.
With our help, you’ll be able to:
- Identify winning keyword opportunities
- Build all types of skyscraper content around those keywords
- Ensure your content is superior to competitors’
- Engage in effective outreach to jump on great backlinking opportunities
- Continually measure and optimize content for better performance
- And more!
To begin with your next skyscraper strategy and other marketing efforts, get in touch with Ignite Visibility today.
