What is Skyscraper Technique?

The Skyscraper Technique is a renowned strategy in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) designed to get more eyes on your content by making it more impressive than your competition's.

Just like in a city, the tallest building gets the most attention, the same logic applies here. This technique involves identifying a keyword you want to rank for, studying high-performing content based on that keyword, and creating an even better unique piece.

Going further back in time, this technique was developed to add value to the consumer experience by introducing more precise, engaging, and comprehensive content than what was already available online. The name is suggestive: your content should tower above the rest, not just for the sake of height, but due to the additional value it provides. When used effectively, the Skyscraper Technique significantly increases organic traffic to a website, due to the enhanced visibility and higher ranking it provides.

Examples of Skyscraper Technique

  1. A blogger writes an advanced guide for beginners in programming: After searching on popular search engines for terms like "programming for beginners," the blogger realizes the current top-ranking posts are not that comprehensive. The blogger opts to create their own version, which includes code snippets, step-by-step illustrative guides, using more relatable language, and integrating engaging visual aids.

  2. Fitness instructor creates a holistic eBook: An instructor sees that most of the top content around "at-home workouts" is limited in scope. They generate a comprehensive eBook ranging from beginner to advanced levels, including diet plans, mental health importance, and workout tracking sheets.

  3. Gardening website revamps post about organic gardening: They find that existing guides are either too generic, overly technical, or consist of text-only content. To outdo these posts, they create an all-inclusive guide integrating how-to videos, infographics, and expert interviews.

  4. Digital marketer develops extensive social media marketing guide: Upon inspecting competing posts, they identify a lack of actionable tips or real-life case studies. They then curate a guide that fills these gaps, incorporates user-friendly lingo, and provides templates for planning social media strategies.

  5. Soup kitchen shares their unique recipes online: After seeing that most recipes online are basic, they begin publishing their unique, tasty recipes, incorporating step-by-step videos and using their own volunteers as narrators to give a more personal touch.

Marketing Tactics Similar to Skyscraper Technique

  • Link Baiting: A strategy of creating valuable content aimed at earning backlinks. It involves using your resources to create something unique and interesting that people would want to link back to.

  • Content Repurposing: This takes existing content and transforms it into another format to reach another segment of your audience, thus extending the mileage of your content.

  • Pillar Content: This is a deep and comprehensive piece of content on a specific topic that can be broken down into smaller sections or blog posts. It's similar to Skyscraper Technique in the sense that it provides in-depth, authoritative content.

  • Guest Posting: This involves writing a blog post for another website in your niche. It helps to expand your reach to new audiences and earn high-quality backlinks, which is also an aim of the Skyscraper Technique.

  • Competitive Analysis: This involves studying your competitors to understand what they're doing well and identify their weaknesses. This underpins the Skyscraper Technique, as you first need to evaluate what's already out there before you can create something better.

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