Can the Skyscraper link building technique help get your business to the top, or is it just another SEO tall tale? We decided to find out…
Here at WPMU DEV, if we’re going to write about something that can improve your business, we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk. So, when we heard about the skyscraper technique, we decided to walk the steps, test it for ourselves, and share the results with you.
In this article, we’ll cover the following:
What is the Skyscraper Technique?
The Skyscraper Technique is an SEO link building strategy that basically works like this:
- Find a competitor’s published article with loads of backlinks related to your site’s content or niche.
- Create a better article (i.e. make it more in-depth or comprehensive, up-to-date, and relevant)
- Contact the sites linking to your competitor’s article and invite them to link to yours instead.
- Watch your page climb up the search engine ladder, then sit back and enjoy the view from the top while new traffic floods into your site.
- Rinse and repeat, and continue building taller skyscrapers until you can’t breathe in any more rarified air from the exosphere.
Sounds simple and looks good on paper.
But we’re not here to write a skyscraper article on the skyscraper technique, so if you want to learn more about it, go here or keep reading to learn how we fared erecting a dozen of these tall edifices (tl;dr … skyscrapers are not a dime a dozen. Read on to learn why).
Let’s start by laying down the foundations…
Our Skyscraper Testing Methodology
You can’t just plonk a ready-made building on a piece of land and start advertising units and floors to rent or sell…you have to plan, research, and lay down some concrete foundations before you start piling on the bricks.
So, let’s start by looking at what it took to get our skyscraper articles off the ground.
Resources – The Crew, Tools, and Time Spent Building a Skyscraper
Our construction crew required everyone and their blog to jump into the pit and start digging. From Savo, our Business Development Manager/Foreman who first proposed to punish us, to Alec, our Partnerships & Outreach manager, who researched suitable topics and ran the outreach campaigns, to our entire writing team who then researched the content and put the articles together, plus members of our marketing team and developers who reviewed articles for SEO, content, and technical accuracy…even James, our CEO, rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty.
While in theory a solo builder could erect a skyscraper article all on their lonesome, it’s probably best to treat the skyscraper method as you would if building a residential apartment complex.
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This article was written by Martin Aranovitch and originally published on WPMU DEV Blog.