The skyscraper technique is a link-building strategy where you improve existing popular content and then replicate the backlinks.
This works extremely well as we’re going to be creating content, which we know is already popular, and then reach out to those websites linking to the original content and then ask them to link to our website.
So this is what’s good for two reasons.
The first is that we’re creating something we know people already linked to.
So the whole process is valid and already verified.
And number two will reach out to the same people who have already shown interest in linking to similar content.
So the chances of them linking to your new content are going to be quite high.
Essentially, this tactic builds on the natural human tendency to be attracted to the best.
So there are three steps to the skyscraper technique:
- The first step is you want to find a relevant piece of content with tons of Backlinks.
- The second is you want to create something that’s way better.
- And the third is you want to also link to the original piece of content to link to your superior content instead.
So let’s go over to Google now and I’ll show you how we can find a piece of content with tons of links in your industry.
And for the purpose of this training, let’s imagine I own a fitness blog that specializes in how to lose weight, weight loss plans, diet tips, and so on.
So the whole blog is focused on weight loss and how you can improve your overall health.
So what I want to do is find some content that is extremely popular in my industry and has lots of backlinks.
So to find the articles with the most links, you want to search one of your keywords, but you want to go for your broadest or your most short-term keyword.
# Step 1
So in my example, I could go for weight loss or you can even go for how to lose weight.
Notice how I’m keeping both of my keywords really broad and I’m not going for how to lose weight for men over 50.
We don’t want to do that because when you go too specific, what actually happens is:
Google returns you fewer websites and these websites are typically less popular, meaning they have fewer backlinks.
Now, remember, the main aim here is to find popular content that has the most amount of backlinks.
So what I’m going to do is remove For mans over 50 and simply search for how to lose weight.
And as you can see, Google has returned nine hundred and forty-nine thousand different search results to us.
So let’s scroll down and have a look at some of these results in position.
One, we have 12 tips to help you lose weight by NHS.
We have started the NHS weight loss plan.
We have how to lose weight, top weight, simple tips.
We’ve got how to lose weight fast, 10 smart weighs tons and tons of articles.
You can even go on page two to find more article ideas as well as we are going for a broad keyword.
Literally, the first five pages are all going to be relevant.
We’ve got how to lose weight fast, 14 ways to drop five pounds a week and so on and so on.
So essentially what you want to do is go for page one and page two and find an article which you believe
is going to be popular based on the title name.
So this is one of the articles I found.
It’s by Red Book Mag and it says, 35 ways to lose weight fast and burn fat even faster.
I really like this article.
It sounds much better than the ones we saw on page one, as I’m pretty sure the ones we saw on page one was like 12 tips to lose weight.
it covers a lot more ways people can use to lose weight.
However, just because I think the title sounds great, it doesn’t mean it’s a great fit for us.
So what we want to do is take the whole website, URL, go over to Semrush and then carry out a search for that within Semrush.
To figure out exactly how many backlinks this particular page has.
So this page in particular has three hundred and seventy-eight backlinks from 112 different websites and this is a really good sign.
Whenever you’re looking for popular pieces of content on the Internet, you always want to make sure you have at least 80 referring domains.
So this has 112 and above our threshold by 32.
This piece of content is actually a really good fit for us and we can actually base our skyscraper technique all upon this piece of content.
So now we found a popular piece of content with tons of backlinks.
That is it for step one and it’s time to move on to step two.
#Step 2
So now we found the content we want to be.
The next step is to create something better, take it to the next level and make it epic.
There are four ways you can do that.
The first is Length.
If the Post is 25 tips, beat it by listing more.
freshness, check to see if the article is outdated.
If it is, you can update it with newer images, screenshots, and more information.
Check out the design.
Content isn’t just about words.
The visual appeal matters to make sure the design stands out.
Depth don’t just list out things, fill in the detail and make it actionable.
That’s all good advice, but don’t fall into the trap of doing things just for the sake of it.
For example, adding twenty-five mediocre tips to an existing list of 25 excellent tips isn’t going to be an improvement show.
If your new version might be lengthier, but it’s not adding any real value.
It’s the same story for other improvements.
To add in a few low-quality illustrations isn’t going to add way more value to the article.
Nor is creating a more UP-TO-DATE guide to say changing the oil in your car.
Sorry, that hasn’t changed much over the years.
The bottom line always thinks about whether improving any of these aspects generally adds value.
So let’s head over to the article we found earlier and just see how we can improve it to make it even better.
So now go back to overlooking the same article.
# Length
And like I said, one of the first things you can do to improve it is going to belong.
So let’s work on this article.
I’m going to show you exactly how you do that now.
So you want to go over to the website wordcounter.net
And essentially what you can do is copy and paste the words from another page into it, and it will tell you how many words that page is.
So unfortunately for this example, to read the content, you actually have to view it like this one by one and then copy that and paste it into word counter and then go to the next slide and continue the same thing.
So typically most content won’t be like this.
It will be in a standard blog post format.
You want to figure out how long the content is and see if you can make those a little bit longer.
Add more up to date.
So easy what you can do that is, as I said in this list, these talks about thirty-five ways to lose weight fast and my new improved content, I can say 40 ways to lose weight on adding more value.
Add in five more steps again.
Just make sure the additional five steps you add are actually valuable and you’re not just adding them for the sake of it, just to have a longer list.
# Freshness
So the second point I mentioned was a freshness and as you can see, this article came out on the 12th of March 2018 or currently in 2020.
So two years ahead of when this came out and there could be a lot of new information.
We can include an article that wasn’t available when this person published the article.
# Design
The third thing was design.
So personally, I’m not a fan of the design of this page.
It’s kind of like you click on a page to read the article and just slide in through one little section.
The whole page isn’t about this.
So in my personal opinion, I do believe we can improve on the design of this page for our content and the full part was depth.
So again, just going through the content so we can see it is actually a bit of depth to this content.
The reason I say that is because they don’t just list start Meal Prepping.
They give you a bit more information about mill prep and how it works and, you know, the ins and outs of it.
So, again, we probably can’t improve on its depth that much.
However, saying that some of these are very broad.
Talk to your doctor and have like four or five sentences right here and they may have loved your body again, very short.
So potentially we can actually improve on the depth as well and now we’ve covered how to improve the content.
It’s time to move on to the next step.
# Step 3
So far, we’ve covered how to find popular content and we’ve also covered how you can improve that content so you make yours more superior.
So it’s time to move on to the last phase now, which is to go out there and actually acquire the backlink.
So please do bear in mind before you actually go over to the step, you do actually need to have your superior content produced before you actually go out there and message the site.
So do keep that in the back of your mind?
if you haven’t actually produced your content already, you might want to go and do that now?
Once you have it, then you can move over to step three.
let’s imagine you actually produce your amazing content and it’s a bet on the Internet.
You are now on step three, which is to acquire the link.
So let’s head back over to semrush and figure out what websites, in particular, are linking to this original piece of content.
So all we need to do is plug the link this into semrush, which I’ve already done, and then go over to the backlinks to see all the websites which are linking to this piece of content.
As you can see, we have three hundred and seventy-eight backlinks in total.
However, at the moment we have links, per for domain set to all.
So what we want to do is change that to one.
Just to be sure, we are seeing one link per domain that has now dropped to 112 hundred.
And of course, we only want to see the backlinks which are do-follow.
So let’s go ahead and click. Follow.
One hundred and twelve has dropped to ninety five, which is still above our threshold of 80.
So all things are still looking really good and you can review all the links here and see what’s going on.
However, what I find is a lot easier is if you actually explore all these backlinks and then delete the columns you don’t actually need.
So let’s go ahead and click export up here on the right-hand side.
We’re going to go for Excel and this is going to download all this backlinking information.
So let’s go ahead and open this file.
once you open the spreadsheet.
It’s going to look pretty similar to this.
Now, don’t worry about all the information you see.
It can be very easy to get overwhelmed.
However, the only two columns we need is actually column C and column D.
So all the other columns you can actually delete from the spreadsheet.
So this tells us the websites which are linking to the content.
So you’ve got meta-99.com, Good-Housekeeping.com, Cosmopolitan Woman’s Day and so on.
Essentially, all we need to do is reach out to all of these websites that are linking to the original content and let them know about our superior content and ask them to link to us instead.
So let’s head back to the PowerPoint slides and I’ll show you exactly the message we can send to these websites to get them to link to our piece of content instead.
So this is the template we send to these websites is a very simple template.
But yeah, it is very effective.
So it simply says, hey, name.
I was searching for some articles about your topic today and I came across this page.
So where it says your topic, you simply fill in the top that you search for.
So for me, it would be how to lose weight.
I was searching for some articles about how to lose weight today, and I came across this page.
The URL, which is going to enter here, is going to be the URL from the first column on the spreadsheet.
So this column right here, the source URL.
The URL on their website, which is linking to the content.
I noticed that you linked to one of my favorite articles, Brackett’s article title.
So where it says article titles in brackets.
What you are going to want to do is simply enter the name of the article that you are competing with.
So in this instance, it’s going to be thirty-five ways to lose weight fast and burn fat even faster.
Just wanted to give you a heads up that I created a similar article.
It’s like the name of the Nameable article.
So again in the same article, we mentioned above, but more far and up to date, URL this URL will be a to your new improved superior content.
Might be worth a mention on your page either way.
Keep up the awesome work.
Choose your name.
So as you can see, I’m not too forceful at all in this email.
I’m quite laid back.
I’m just letting them know that I found the article on the web is a really good article.
However, on my website, I actually have one which is even better and far superior.
So it would be worth a mention on your page.
But if not either way keeps up the awesome work.
This is the template we use and we get such good results from it.
Conclusion
I highly recommend you use it as well.
However, make sure you personalize it a little bit.
The main message you want to get across is that you have something very similar to what they linked to.
However, your content is far superior, so that is essentially how you carry out the skyscraper technique.
There is a lot of work involved in the beginning stages, such as finding the content in the backlinks and then reaching out to the website.
However, I highly recommend it as a website.
You are competing with will not go to this extent to get backlinks, which means if you go that extra length, you are going to have one thing in your arsenal which they don’t have, giving you a better chance to rank higher.
