GlossarySEO
What is the skyscraper technique?
Also called: skyscraper content, skyscraper link building
Definition
The skyscraper technique is a link building method: find content in your niche that has already earned many links, create something clearly better, then contact the sites linking to the original and show them yours.
Skyscraper technique, explained
Brian Dean of Backlinko popularized the technique and named it. His description has three steps: find link-worthy content, make something even better, and reach out to the right people. The reasoning is that a page with many links proves there's demand among linkers for that topic, so a better version has a ready-made audience of people who might link.
"Better" is where most attempts fail. Dean's own suggestions include making the content more thorough, more up to date, better designed or more useful. In practice, many copycats made pages that were merely longer. Linkers didn't care, and a decade of "ultimate guides" pitched to the same inboxes made outreach much harder.
What still works is the principle, done honestly. If the most-linked resource in your niche is outdated, incomplete or wrong, and you can produce something clearly superior, such as current data, a working tool, or a genuinely clearer explanation, the people who linked to the old one may want to know. The pitch should say specifically what's better, not just "I wrote a longer version".
Keep expectations modest. Reply rates for cold outreach are low, and the sites linking to a popular resource get a lot of these emails. The payoff is often less about the outreach and more about having a page that deserves links for years.
Avoid the shortcuts that crept into the tactic: offering payment or link swaps in the pitch turns an editorial request into a link scheme.
Why it matters for founders
It forces a useful question before you write: what already earns links in my niche, and can I genuinely beat it? That filter alone improves what a small team publishes.
Example
The most-linked "email deliverability checklist" in a niche predates Gmail's current sender requirements. A founder publishes an updated checklist citing the current rules and emails sites linking to the old one. A few update their links.
Common mistakes
- Making content longer instead of genuinely better.
- Mass-mailing templated pitches to every linker.
- Offering money or link swaps inside the pitch.
Sources
Checked
Related terms
- Linkable assetA linkable asset is a page created to be genuinely worth referencing, such as a free tool, original dataset, template, calculator or definitive reference, so other sites link to it without being paid or traded.
- Broken link buildingBroken link building is finding links on other websites that point to dead pages, then contacting the site owner to suggest a working, relevant page of yours as a replacement.
- Link buildingLink building is the work of getting other websites to link to yours. Links help search engines discover pages and judge their importance, which is why link quality and how links were earned both matter.
- Original researchOriginal research is content built on information you produced yourself, such as survey results, product data, experiments, benchmarks or first-hand tests, rather than summarizing what others have already published.