How do you get authoritative sites in yourniche to link to you, even if you don't have a Fortune 500 marketing budget or connectionswith influential bloggers? If you've ever asked yourself this question, then you'll love The Skyscraper Technique.
It's a strategy that I've used to build highquality backlinks to sites in pretty much every niche under the sun, from internshipsto insurance.
I'm Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko, the place where marketers turn for higher rankings and more traffic, and in this videoI'm going to show you exactly how you can use The Skyscraper Technique to generate linksand traffic to your site.
Keep watching.
Before I get into the nuts and bolts of TheSkyscraper Technique, let me tell you a quick story.
When I started my blog, Backlinko.
com, I knewthat I was entering one of the most noisy, competitive spaces online, internet marketing.
And I knew from growing other sites in competitiveindustries that unless I did something crazy to stand out, I was going to end up like prettymuch every other site in the internet marketing space – no traffic, and buried on the 10thpage of Google.
And I also knew that publishing great contentwas one of those things that sounded nice but didn't really work in the real world.
Maybe you've seen this yourself – you workhard to publish great content on your site all the time, but you barely get any linksand traffic for your effort.
So I knew that, and that's when I decidedto utilize The Skyscraper Technique, and I -literally- doubled my search engine trafficin two weeks.
And here's exactly how I did it, and exactlyhow you can do the same thing for your site.
So it's time to break down the exact threestep process that I use.
So the first step is to find content in yourindustry that's already done well in terms of attracting links, social shares, comments, and traffic.
One of the easiest ways to do this is justto search for competitive keywords in Google.
Because if you find a piece of content that'sranking well in Google, you better believe that there are a lot of links pointing toit.
And if you want to just double check and makesure that it's actually an authoritative page, you can put it into a tool like ahrefs, MajesticSEO, and Open Site Explorer to see if there are a lot of links pointing to it.
In my case, I noticed that content aroundthings like 'Google's ranking factors' and 'Google's 200 ranking symbols' tended to attracta lot of links and that's the content I decided to use as the base of my skyscraper.
So now that you've identified a piece of contentwith a proven track record of generating links, it's time to create something even better.
And actually this is why this strategy iscalled The Skyscraper Technique.
You probably never wondered what the 11thtallest building in the world is, right? Everyone's attracted to number one, so whatyou're doing with step #2 is taking the base content that you found in step #1 and thenslapping twenty stories on top of it, and all of the sudden you have the piece of contentthat everyone's talking about.
So how can you make something heads and shouldersabove what's already out there? Well, there are three strategies that workreally well.
The first is to make your content more thorough.
In my case, I noticed that most of the contentout there that talked about Google ranking factors talked about how there -were- 200, but they didn't even list all 200! And despite that, they still generated a tonof links and social shares.
You can also make your content more up todate.
I've found that despite Google's supposedpreference for fresh content, there's a lot of outdated stuff sitting on Google's firstpage.
So just making something that's out of dateand updating it for today is one of the easiest and best ways to make content that's clearlybetter than what's already out there.
And finally, you can make the content betterdesigned than what's already out there.
Now make no mistake, design is huge, becauseit influences how valuable people perceive your content to be.
In general, the better designed it is, thehigher the perceived value.
In my case, I noticed most of the Google RankingFactors content was not only not thorough and out of date, but also really ugly.
So I decided to invest in nice custom bannersfor my blog posts.
Now, once you have something that's clearlythe best out there, it's time to get the word out.
Now, how do you get the word out about yourcontent? With good old-fashioned email outreach.
Now, most people approach email outreach link-buildingthe wrong way; they just email random people and beg for a link, and that's not what we'redoing here.
We're strategically reaching out to peoplewho are very likely to link to us, specifically, people that linked to the inferior contentthat you used as your base.
And here's the exact word-for-word scriptthat I use to generate dozens of links to my piece of content.
“Hey Dave, I was checking out some of the articles onyour site and found your post about SEO strategies.
Great stuff! I couldn't help but notice you linked to thatclassic article about Google's ranking factors.
I also love that resource.
In fact, it inspired me to create a more thoroughand up-to-date version.
Here's the link in case you want to checkit out.
It might be worth a mention in your article.
Either way, keep up the awesome work!” That simple email script converted over 15%, which is significantly higher than most email outreach campaigns.
And as you know, today with links it's allabout -quality- not quantity, and a lot of those 15% were real gems, including a pagerank 5 pagelink on a D-moz listed site.
And besides, the results speak for themselves:Less than two weeks after publishing and promoting my post, my organic search engine trafficdoubled.
So that's the power of The Skyscraper Technique, something myself and dozens of Backlinko readers have used to get better results from theircontent.
Did you learn something new from this video? Then subscribe to my YouTube channel rightnow.
Or better yet, head over to Backlinko.
comand sign up for the newsletter, where I share exclusive marketing tips and strategies.
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