The skyscraper technique was first introduced back in 2016 by Brian Dean of Backlinko and then popularized by other figures like Neil Patel.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to apply it to get more quality backlinks and increase your organic traffic.
More specifically, we’re going to cover the following what the skyscraper technique is, what the purpose of the skyscraper technique is, and why the skyscraper technique is important for your website.
Finally, we’re going to discuss and illustrate a step-by-step process of applying the skyscraper technique using Respona.
Key Takeaways:
- The skyscraper technique still works in 2026, but creating better content alone is usually not enough anymore.
- Modern skyscraper link building depends heavily on outreach, promotion, and acquiring relevant backlinks from authoritative websites.
- The best skyscraper content improves on existing successful content through better depth, structure, visuals, user experience, and updated information.
- AI Overviews and AI-generated recommendations now reward content that already has strong authority, backlinks, and visibility in search engines.
- Outreach and relationship building are still some of the most important parts of making the skyscraper technique work consistently.
Link building cheat sheet
What is the Skyscraper Technique?
The skyscraper technique focuses on finding the best piece of content out there around a particular keyword and creating something even better with the goal of offering this new content as a valuable backlink to the websites that have linked to old content previously.
If you’re into email marketing and looking to boost the content marketing strategy for either yourself or for a client, then you’ve most likely caught yourself looking for ways to get your skyscraper content ranked as high as possible in the search engine results pages (SERPs), in order to gain more organic traffic.
This is where the skyscraper technique comes in; it’s a simple yet effective way to create better-performing pieces of content.
There are three steps that’ll make the skyscraper technique work:
- Find valuable content that’s already ranking for your target keyword
- Create a piece of high-quality content
- Promote your piece of skyscraper content to the blogs and publications that refer or link back to some of the best performing pieces of content for your target keyword
Let’s break things down.
Step 1: Find great content that already ranks for your target keyword
This means conducting keyword research and finding a good keyword you wish to get ranked high in the SERPs and identifying which content piece is currently the best one out there around that very same term.
The best piece of content is typically one that ranks very high – ideally as the first search engine result – and receives a lot of attention from its target audience.
This would mean that it gets a good amount of organic search traffic, social media shares, comments, and – most importantly – a number of high quality backlinks.
Now that you know which is the best piece of skyscraper content for the term you’re interested in, it’s time to move on to the second step.
Step 2: Create something even better
To execute this step, you’ll have to create a piece of content that’s ultimately better than the current best one out there.
Remember – you want to be the tallest skyscraper or it doesn’t work.
This means providing readers with better, and even more in-depth information, adding high-quality multimedia that’ll improve user experience, and anything else that’ll make your new content more fun, interesting, and engaging.
The purpose of all this is to create the competitive content piece out there around your target keyword.
However, one thing that’s a major search engine ranking factor in the eyes of Google Analytics – and the essence of a successful skyscraper technique – is creating a solid link building strategy based on acquiring the backlinks the current best content has.
This leads us to our third and final step.
Step 3: Promote your content
This step is of vital importance; it’s essential to creating an exceptional content piece based on the skyscraper technique.
In addition to competitive content creation, you must promote it to relevant websites that have previously linked to the resource that had been considered the best and ask them to link back to yours, which is the better alternative.
You can do that by finding the email address of the right person behind each of those websites and sending them high-quality outreach emails.
All of this activity is with the end goal of recognizing your piece as the best one for the keyword and linking back to you.
Simply make sure that the backlinks you find are indeed relevant and valuable to you.
Overall, those are the steps to executing the skyscraper technique.
Let’s have a look at an example of a blog post that has taken advantage of it in order to create the best content out there.
We’ll look at Fundera’s blog post on the topic of small business grants for women.
One thing that differentiates it from other high-ranking content is the use of great images and infographics, as shown below.
A different picture has been designed for each of the grants, thus helping users visually understand what the piece is all about.
Now, let’s have a look at what another piece of relevant content looks like which also ranks high in Google for the same target term.
Straight away, you can see the difference between the two when it comes to readability levels and the overall user experience, which consequently has an impact on search engine optimization as well.
The team behind Fundera also designed an infographic to improve the quality of the existing content, making it significantly better than almost all of the other pieces in the SERPs.
Now let’s see how well this piece performs organically.
As you can see from the screenshot below, starting in March 2019 when the piece was published, the organic traffic has been growing at a good rate and even reached over 20k visits each month.
The same thing applies to the organic keywords when – at its peak – the piece was ranking for over 1.5k keywords in the top 100 organic search results.
When it comes to the traffic value, around the same period the organic traffic peaked at over 20k monthly visits, the traffic was valued at over $45k.
This is the estimated value of the traffic if it had been acquired through a PPC campaign.
This all adds up to say that – despite the ups and downs – this is a great piece of link worthy content and a good case of the skyscraper technique.
Author’s Note: We can’t be sure that the website owner has indeed used the skyscraper technique, meaning we don’t know that they’ve reached out to other important websites asking them to include a link to their resource. We’re using this example to show you that the difference in the quality of a piece of similar content can have great results for its organic performance.
What’s particularly interesting about this piece is the number of keywords it ranks for.
As you can see above, there are keywords like “small business grants for women”, “woman in business grant”, and many more for which the content ranks in the top ten search engine results.
It’s pretty clear that applying the skyscraper technique – or certainly the first two steps – can really help a piece of content outperform competitors and attract valuable traffic.
As we talked about in step three, an important aspect of the skyscraper method is also amazing for link building to your engaging content.
You can do that either by reaching out to other websites you’re interested in or simply by letting them find you on their own and deciding whether what you’ve created is link-worthy content.
Ideally, you can do both.
According to the published case study by SiegeMedia around this particular piece, they helped Fundera acquire 66 high quality links for it.
Actually, if you take a look at the backlink history, there’s a big spike in new backlinks around July 2020.
As you can see from the screenshot we looked at a moment ago, this had a positive consequence on the organic keywords the original content ranked for as well.
So far, it’s pretty clear that applying the skyscraper technique can prove to be very valuable for a piece of content.
Let’s see exactly why.
Why is the Skyscraper Technique Important?
The SEO skyscraper technique is very important because it helps you build an awesome content idea that stands out on the SERP and attracts valuable traffic, quality backlinks, shares on social media, and comments from readers of your content.
Like we covered earlier, a vital factor for this method to work is the link building benefits that come along with it.
Creating a piece of high quality content that’s informative and user-friendly is essential, but nowadays skyscraper link building play a major role in ranking higher in the search engines.
According to a study by Backlinko, pages with many backlinks rank higher than pages with not as many.
To be precise, the first search result in Google has, on average, 3.8 times more backlinks than the rest of the first page results.
Pretty impressive, right?
What’s important to point out is that backlinks and social media shares themselves aren’t necessarily valuable; they should be relevant to your content and from high-authority websites.
That’s what makes them valuable.
You can see whether a website is of high authority or not by looking at its DR, also known as domain authority.
The higher the DR, the more valuable the backlinks you receive from it will be.
In turn, this will slowly increase your own website’s DR, thus giving you more authority and helping you rank higher in the SERPs.
That’s exactly why it’s important to actively acquire backlinks for your skyscraper content.
One of the most effective ways to do that is to use an email outreach tool like Respona, in order to reach out to people who are already linking back to the top-performing competitor content which you want to compete against and ask them to link back to you instead.
That way, you’ll create a high-quality list of link prospects who you’ll know for sure are interested in pieces of content around that particular topic.
Let’s talk more about the purpose of the skyscraper technique.
What is the Purpose of the Skyscraper Technique?
The purpose behind the skyscraper SEO technique is to find the best content around a keyword, create something that’s even better, and then acquire as many backlinks as you can that are already linking back to that best piece of content.
By doing that, you’ll get plenty of benefits for your website.
First of all, since your new content will be the best one out there and ranked very high in the SERPs, you’ll receive a good amount of organic traffic which can then be converted to customers, users, or subscribers.
You also increase your content’s interactions, such as social shares and comments, thus giving you more exposure and slowly establishing your site as an authority in your field, which is great for brand awareness, public relations, organic traffic, and your business’ well-being in general.
Sounds good, right?
What’s more, by actively acquiring backlinks you create relationships with editors, influencers, and bloggers who might prove to be useful in the long run when you want to receive more backlinks for other pieces of content, too.
All in all, there are many benefits when deciding to apply the skyscraper technique.
The ultimate purpose of it, however, is managing to outperform the best competitive pieces out there and ranking as high as possible in the SERPs.
To achieve that, creating better content is not enough; you must promote it as much as you can via a solid link-building & content strategy.
Skyscraper Technique Challenges
While the skyscraper technique can be a game-changer for your content strategy, it’s not without its challenges.
First off, creating content that truly stands out can be easier said than done.
It’s not just about adding more information but about enhancing the reader’s experience with improved design, multimedia elements, and interactive features.
This requires time, effort, and sometimes additional resources to ensure your content is head and shoulders above the rest.
Then there’s the task of thoroughly analyzing your competition.
Identifying what makes their content tick and finding opportunities for improvement demands a keen eye and a strategic mindset.
Promotion is another area where many might stumble.
Even with killer content, a robust distribution strategy is essential. Reaching out for backlinks involves finding the right contacts, crafting engaging outreach emails, and navigating the inevitable rejections.
Persistence and a personal touch in your communication can make a big difference here.
Convincing site owners to update their links in favor of yours can be challenging, requiring you to build genuine relationships and provide clear value.
Moreover, keeping your skyscraper content relevant over time is a continuous endeavor. As the market evolves, your content may need regular updates to maintain its standing as the go-to resource for your target keyword.
The technique also has its limitations with scale and scope. It works best for specific and niche topics where in-depth coverage is feasible. For broader subjects, you might find yourself competing with a sea of high-quality articles, making it tougher to shine.
Let’s now see how you can apply the skyscraper technique step-by-step using our very own tool, Respona.
Download Our Skyscraper Checklist
As you know by now, applying the skyscraper technique can help you take your content & SEO strategy to the next level.
However, it does include several steps, a fact that might make you feel intimidated.
From finding the right popular topic to cover and coming up with the best and most promising content ideas, to writing a well-curated piece of popular content that’ll increase your success rate and maximize your chances of getting links back to your resource – we’ve covered it all.
Plus, the skyscraper technique also requires efficient outreach and the ability to manage communications with your prospects.
That’s why we want to streamline the process for you by creating the checklist you see above.
All you have to do is follow the steps – yes, it’s that easy!
A Better Way to Build Links
The biggest problem with the skyscraper technique has never really been creating the content.
It’s the outreach.
Finding high performing content, building something better, exporting backlink data from Site Explorer, finding the right people to contact, sending outreach emails, following up multiple times, negotiating placements, keeping track of responses, it becomes a massive workflow pretty quickly.
This is why a lot of people give up on skyscraper link building halfway through.
The actual skyscraper SEO technique still works.
But brute-forcing outreach manually at scale is exhausting.
At Respona, the process is built around handling that entire side for you.
Instead of spending hours prospecting and emailing website owners yourself, you can place an order with your target pages, keywords, anchor text preferences, and niche requirements.
Then the Campaigns feature helps identify articles already ranking in search engines and already influencing AI Overviews for those same topics.
Getting placements on these can also influence whether your brand appears inside AI-generated recommendations.
From there, the team handles the outreach, relationship building, negotiations, and placements for you.
All you have to do is review the live placements and monitor your visibility increase over time.
So instead of trying to manually run skyscraper outreach campaigns across hundreds of websites, you focus on getting placements on pages already driving:
- search rankings
- backlinks
- referral traffic
- AI visibility
all at the same time.
That’s a much more scalable link building strategy than relying entirely on cold outreach yourself.
Link building cheat sheet
Now Over to You
The skyscraper technique is still one of the best ways to create link-worthy content and improve search rankings.
But in 2026, the promotion side matters just as much as the content itself.
Without strong outreach and high quality backlinks, even great content can struggle to gain traction.
If you want help getting placements on the pages already driving rankings, traffic, and AI visibility, you can simply place an order and let Respona handle the outreach and placements for you.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Does the skyscraper technique still work in 2026?
Yes.
The skyscraper technique still works well when paired with strong outreach, high quality backlinks, and genuinely superior content.
Who created the skyscraper technique?
The skyscraper technique was originally introduced by Brian Dean from Backlinko.
What is skyscraper link building?
Skyscraper link building is the process of creating better content than existing successful content and then promoting it to websites already linking to competing articles.
Why is outreach important for the skyscraper method?
Outreach is what helps your skyscraper content actually earn backlinks and visibility instead of sitting unnoticed after publication.
What makes good skyscraper content?
Good skyscraper content improves on the original article through better depth, updated information, stronger visuals, improved user experience, and clearer structure.
Do backlinks still matter for skyscraper SEO?
Absolutely.
Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals for search engines and also influence visibility inside AI Overviews and AI-generated answers.
What tools help with the skyscraper technique?
Popular tools include Ahrefs Site Explorer, Google Analytics, keyword research tools, outreach software, and content optimization platforms.
What is the difference between the skyscraper technique and regular content marketing?
The skyscraper strategy specifically focuses on improving existing successful content and acquiring backlinks from websites already linking to similar content.
Does the skyscraper technique help with AI Overviews too?
Yes.
Content with strong authority, backlinks, and visibility in search engines has a much higher chance of being referenced inside AI Overviews and AI-generated recommendations.
Is the skyscraper technique good for every niche?
Not always.
The skyscraper method works best in industries where content marketing, outreach, and informational search traffic already play a major role.
What is the biggest challenge with skyscraper outreach?
Usually scale.
Finding the right people, sending personalized outreach, following up consistently, and managing hundreds of conversations manually takes a huge amount of time.
