Let’s face it.. most advice you find on Google about increasing your website traffic is old. The strategies that worked 2 years ago won’t work now! It can be very frustrating if you don’t get the results even after spending a lot of time creating great content. We all know, that the most common advice for increasing traffic to a new blog is: “create more content, share it on social media, optimize for keywords, blah blah blah”. If you’re blogging for a while, you probably know that won’t work! Because the advice is not specific and it is not PROVEN to bring you results. So what should you do instead? You need to find creative ways to promote your blog to build high-quality backlinks and increase your overall website traffic. Here’s where the Skyscraper technique comes into play as it is one of the POWERFUL strategies to build quality backlinks. It doesn’t matter whether you’re building a completely new blog or an old one, you can use this technique to build links and increase your overall search traffic.

Why promotion is more important than content creation?

It feels really bad if you don’t get good results from the content that you thought would go viral, right? There’s a difference between creating content that is popular and creating content that would go popular. If you think that a particular piece of content would go viral, it might not be able to get even 100 visitors. So what is going wrong here? Most people think that, “they’ve to create more content to get more traffic to their blogs”. It was completely true a decade ago when there was not much competition. But does it work now? NO! You see, there are a lot of blogs (read thousands) going live and millions of blog posts are getting published every single day. It’s almost impossible to get a lot of exposure to your blog posts if you don’t promote your content well. “Focus on spending 80% of your time on content promotion and 20% on creating content”. Let’s say if you’re spending 2 hours creating a blog post, spend 8 hours promoting it to get the REAL benefits from your blog. So lookout for ways to promote your content. We know there are a lot of promotion strategies out there (including social media, email, SEO, forum submission etc) but there are not highly effective if you’re a new blogger. Why? If you don’t have enough online connections, no one will share your stuff! Then what else can you do? How to get incoming links from other blogs and increase your social shares and blog traffic? Is there any simple technique that helps you bring more visibility to your blog posts? Yes, there is one.. “The Skyscraper technique”.

What is The Skyscraper technique?

Brian Dean first coined the phrase “Skyscraper technique”. The skyscraper technique in simple terms – “getting high-quality backlinks and more social shares by creating content that is proven to be exceptional”. Just like a skyscraper, your content becomes the one everyone is talking about. That’s how you attract backlinks to your content. The skyscraper technique works in 3 simple steps; Step 1: Find content that’s link-worthy Step 2: Create content around that topic and make your content even better Step 3: Reach out to the right people so your content start getting links, social shares, etc

Benefits of Skyscraper techniques

Want to know why this technique is so effective? Here are few benefits of it. Skyscraper technique helps you:

build high-quality content that is useful for your readers increase your social shares increase overall backlinks (The most important aspect of Off-Page SEO) to your blog posts. increase your blog comments increase your authority increase your blog exposure increase your overall blog traffic from search engines build strong relationships with other bloggers

All in all, this technique uses a proven content creation framework that allows you to easily climb up rankings on Google and get more blog readers. That’s what we all need to build profitable sites, right? So get the most out of this link building strategy and you will be blown away with the results. Are you convinced that this technique is right for you? So what are you waiting for? Let’s dive into the details of how to use the proven Skyscraper technique to build quality links and increase your blog traffic.

In 3 simple steps, I’ll explain you how to use this technique to create content that performs exceptionally well.

Step 1: Create a list of highly sharable and link-worthy content ideas

The very first step in Skyscraper technique is that you have to find link-worthy content. Find out the content that is already performing well in your niche. Why? If an article, video, or Infographic in your industry is performing really well means it already has huge potential to attract thousands (if not millions) of more visitors. By focusing on “viral content ideas”, you are ready to rock the blogosphere. So how can you find the list of sharable and link-worthy content in your niche? What do you need? We know there are a lot of blogging tools out there but we highly recommend the following two tools for the Skyscraper technique.

Semrush (best tool to find link-worthy content) Buzzsumo (to find the highly sharable topic ideas around your niche) Ahrefs Content Explorer (this also gives you social metrics and onsite metrics to find better topics in any industry)

Here’s a quick example of using Semrush to find high-performing content. Once you’re on Semrush, go to the Organic Research tool and enter any of your competitor’s URL. Quick note: If you don’t have access to Semrush, grab Semrush 30-day free trial. Let’s take the example of Backlinko.com As you can see above, you’ll instantly see a huge list of metrics of that URL including all the keywords that are generating the traffic. When you scroll down a bit, you’ll see a list of top pages with the most amount of traffic and backlinks.

See that? You’ll find a list of all the top-performing pages of ANY URL using Semrush. You’ll also discover the traffic percentage along with the total number of keyword variations. Similarly, you can go to Buzzsumo and enter a keyword related to your blog’s topic. You’ll come up with several top posts in your industry that got more social shares. A few more handy tools for finding great content in any niche are: Twitter: We all know how powerful the micro-blogging social platform Twitter is. Twitter has millions of active users and thousands of people actively search for various keywords. Just enter your desired keywords and you will come up with the hashtags and links, pick the URL’s that get more retweets and comments. You can start making those content ideas even better to get more buzz. Quora: Quora is one of the BIGGEST Q & A platforms where you can find a ton of questions asked by millions of users. Just enter any topic or keyword and Quora will show a list of questions which you can use as topic ideas. Once you have a list of several top-performing topic ideas in your industry, you’re ready to dive into the next step.

Step 2: Create content based on your ideas and make it exceptional

Now that you found the list of popular topic ideas in your niche, in the second step, you will make the content more creative to get better results for your blog. “Creating epic content is the key in getting outstanding results from the Skyscraper technique”. If your readers are not completely blown away with your content, you’re not going to get good results with this technique. Without having great content on your blog, no one is going to link to your posts or share your stuff. This is the most important step in the this technique. So what can you do to make the already “performed well” content better? Add exceptional value. Here are a few effective ideas that will help you create viral blog posts. Make them detailed: Once you have a list of proven viral blog post ideas, read the posts entirely. Find out what is missing. If they are not detailed, make your posts as detailed as possible. And include everything that makes sense to the blog post ideas you have discovered. Make it appealing: If the posts that are already performed well in your niche don’t have many visual data (like images, videos, or Infographics), include them in your blog posts. Did you know that well-explained blog posts with lots of visual data attract more shares and incoming links? So make sure to spend quality time adding more images to your content. Use resources and data: Research-backed up data is the most authoritative content in any industry. If you want to really attract lots of social shares and incoming links from other blogs, make sure to focus on creating real case studies, well-researched content, etc. Now that you are done with creating the most viral content for your blog, it’s now time to promote it to the right people to get some rewards from your efforts.

Step 3: Reach out to the right people

Find out who is interested in linking or promoting your stuff to get more rewards from your content. How can you find someone who is interested in sharing or linking your blog posts? One of the simplest ways to do that is to reach out to people who’ve already linked to the original post. You can use the Semrush Backlink Analytics tool to easily find a list of all the referring domains that are linking to a URL. You just need to enter the target URL to find its backlink sources. Have a look; As you can see above, the Backlink Analytics tool from Semrush is showing over 8.1K referring domains to one of the web pages from Backlinko. Just click on the “Referring domains” to find all its backlinks sources. See that? You will instantly discover all the linking domains that are linked to the original content. Once you have the “list of targeted people”, you can then start pitching them your piece of content.

Create an email that gets opened, read, and responded

Here’s where the beginner’s guide to the Skyscraper technique comes into play. If you forget this one section, you won’t get desired results. Ignore this “email outreach” at your own peril. Email outreach is the biggest strategy that makes or breaks this technique. If you don’t know how to write emails that get opened, you will never be able to get the results you desire. It’s essential to learn how to write emails that get responses. Unfortunately getting a response from the most influential bloggers is not easy as it sounds. They are extremely busy and they don’t get a chance to even read your emails sometimes. That’s the reason why you need to spend time crafting perfect emails. Here are a few effective tips to write emails that get responses from influencers.

Write a stunning subject line. Because it is the first thing everyone will see. If it’s not compelling, consider that your email is going to be trash! Keep your email short and sweet. Busy bloggers don’t have enough time to read long and boring emails. So always keep your emails short and concise. Serve before you seek help. Before asking for shares or links from other bloggers make sure to first tweet their stuff and frequently link out to them. Blogging is all about the win/win approach. Always use their names and NEVER send automated emails. Personalization is the key to getting your emails opened. Follow up. One of the most common mistakes most bloggers make while sending out emails to others is they just send one email and expect a reply instantly. See, top bloggers in any industry are busy. They get a ton of emails every single day. If they don’t respond to your first email, it might be got out of their radar, this is the time you need to follow them up with another email. Make sure to follow up with another email after 5 to 6 days. This always gives you better results. That’s the secret to making the most out of this technique.

Here’s a sample email pitch that gets good results. See, how simple is the above email. My name is Anil, founder of BloggersPassion. I’ve been reading your blog from some time and I’m really impressed. I recently wrote a post that is highly relevant to your most popular post (link). Hope you’ll like it. I’d appreciate your tweet! Regards, [your name].

Is it possible to build your blog audience from scratch using the skyscraper technique?

Yes, absolutely. The skyscraper technique is the surefire way to build a successful blog from scratch. If you want to build a large blog audience from the beginning, then you’re not alone. By using the proven methods you can definitely build a massive blog. Unfortunately, there are not so many “proven techniques” out there that will get you results. And creating link-worthy content using this technique is really simple. Go and find out the most popular content ideas in your industry and create better content around them. Reach out to the right people and you’ll soon start receiving great results. Make sure to spend extra time creating longer content, adding compelling images, and making your content SEO-friendly by better optimizing them and promoting it to the right people to get the most out of this technique. Here are some of the questions about the skyscraper technique in SEO.

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Final Thoughts on Skyscraper Technique SEO

We all know the feeling of no one reading or sharing our stuff when we spend too much time creating it. “Lack of readers” is what stops most people to quit blogging. If you are struggling to increase your traffic with content, it’s time for you to start using additional proven strategies such as the Skyscraper technique. Instead of posting new articles daily, it’s 10x times better to create exceptional content. A bad post is no less than no post at all. So if you want to bring quality results to your blog, make sure to spend quality time crafting detailed articles that will help your audience. If you don’t have time to create quality stuff, hire someone to do it for you. But make sure to ONLY post outstanding content that everyone wants to share and link out to. Be generous in linking to other bloggers from your blog posts. After all, to get more social shares from others you have to first share with others and in order to get links from others, you need to start linking out to others. The Skyscraper technique is highly recommended for SEO and link building. It’s also important to focus on writing great emails to busy bloggers and getting responses. If you don’t get a response from your first email, don’t give up, follow them up with another email until they send you a reply. What are you waiting for? Start implementing the Skyscraper technique for SEO and let us know if you’ve any more questions in the comments.