What Is Skyscraper Technique?
Written byFlavio Amiel Founder, Roborank
The Skyscraper Technique is a link-building method in which you find a piece of content that has already attracted many backlinks, create a substantially better and more complete version of it, then reach out to the sites linking to the original and ask them to link to yours instead. It targets proven link demand rather than untested topics.
- The Skyscraper Technique was coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko in a 2013 post; his own case study reported a 110% organic-traffic lift to a target page in 14 days.
- It has three steps: find link-worthy content, make something markedly better, and pitch it to people already linking to the original.
- The core insight is targeting proven demand — you build on topics that have already demonstrated they attract links, not ones you hope will.
- Its weakness is that ‘longer and prettier’ no longer guarantees links or rankings; without genuine added value and matched search intent, the outreach falls flat.
How the Skyscraper Technique Works
The Skyscraper Technique reduces link building to three steps. First, find content that has already earned a lot of backlinks — proof that the topic attracts links. Second, create something markedly better: more thorough, more current, better designed, easier to use. Third, and most importantly, reach out to the sites that link to the original and suggest they link to your improved version instead.
The strategy’s cleverness is in step three. Rather than pitch cold to random webmasters, you are contacting people who have already demonstrated they will link to this exact topic. They are a pre-qualified prospect list. You are not asking them to do something new; you are giving them a reason to upgrade an existing link to a better resource. That is a far easier yes than an unsolicited request.
The underlying principle is to build on proven demand. Most content fails to earn links because no one wanted to link to that topic in the first place. By starting from a page that already collected links, the technique removes that risk before a single word is written. It borrows the same logic a market researcher uses: rather than guessing what people want, you study what they have already voted for with their links, then supply a better version of it.
The name captures the mindset. Brian Dean explained that he chose “skyscraper” because of how people react to tall buildings — you notice the tallest one on the skyline, and there is an instinctive pull to build one story higher. Applied to content, you find the current tallest structure on a topic, the piece everyone links to, and you put up something that plainly towers over it.
Example of the Skyscraper Technique
The technique’s origin is also its best documented example. Brian Dean of Backlinko coined the term in a 2013 post, and his case study is the reference point everyone cites. Dean identified a linkable topic in the SEO niche, published a deliberately superior resource — his post on Google’s ranking factors — and then ran targeted outreach to sites linking to weaker existing content on the same subject.
The reported result, per Dean’s write-up at backlinko.com, was a 110% increase in organic search traffic to the page in 14 days, driven by the new backlinks the outreach earned. Over the following years that same post continued to accumulate links — Backlinko reports it went on to gather well over 17,000 backlinks and hold the top spot for its target keyword for years. It is, fittingly, an evergreen demonstration of an evergreen tactic: a single asset that kept compounding because it was both the best answer and the most-pitched one.
The lesson worth extracting is not “write long posts.” It is that the traffic came from links, the links came from outreach, and the outreach worked because it targeted people with a proven appetite for the topic. Strip out the outreach and the case study does not exist.
Everyone remembers step two — make it better — and forgets that Dean’s method lives or dies on step three, the outreach. The technique was never ‘write the longest post and wait.’ It was ‘find the exact people who have already proven they will link to this topic, then hand them a reason to upgrade the link.’ The magic is the pre-qualified prospect list, not the word count. Teams that skip the outreach and just publish a bloated 5,000-word version of a competitor’s post get the cost of the technique with none of its payoff. And ‘better’ has quietly inflated: in 2013 more comprehensive was enough; today it means genuinely more useful, better structured, and more current — not merely longer. Build for the linker’s reason to switch, not for a word target.
Limits of the Technique in 2026
The Skyscraper Technique earned a reputation partly because, in 2013, “more comprehensive” was often enough to win links and rankings. That is no longer true. Search engines reward pages that best satisfy search intent, not simply the longest page, and prospects have grown wary of formulaic “I made a better version, link to me” emails. The method still works when the improvement is real — genuinely more useful, better organized, more current — and when the outreach is personal and relevant. It fails when teams remember only the “make it taller” half and skip the demand research and relationship-building that made the original case study work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who invented the Skyscraper Technique?
What are the three steps of the Skyscraper Technique?
Does the Skyscraper Technique still work?
Why is it called the Skyscraper Technique?
The Bottom Line
The Skyscraper Technique is a demand-first approach to link building: rather than guess what might earn links, you copy the shape of what already has, improve on it decisively, and pitch the upgrade to the people who linked to the original. The method remains sound, but its old shortcut — bigger equals better — no longer holds. Real added value and targeted outreach are what still make it work.
Sources
- The Skyscraper Technique: Link Building Case Study (+110% traffic in 14 days) — Backlinko (Brian Dean)
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