Have you ever had to listen to a business peer brag about a sudden spike they experienced in their content views? Or heard awe-inspiring stories of massive increases in web traffic? Do you find yourself feeling constantly frustrated about the small or dwindling numbers which either visit your website or engage with your content? If you have amazing, useful pieces of killer content your target audience loves, it’s about time you saw a major web traffic boost.
Luckily, there are steps you can take and measures you can put in place to make sure you match those glorious instances of web traffic overload, and to grow your content’s audience. Not only that, but you’ll be able to make sure that the right people (aka potential clients, customers or followers) land on your page, eagerly read your content, and potentially convert.
Granted, it’s not always easy to get the customer to this part of the funnel, and it takes strategy and persistence – but with the Skyscraper Technique, you are well equipped to in increase your web traffic by up to 600%!
What is the Skyscraper Technique?
The Skyscraper Technique was “invented” by SEO expert and content marketing wiz Brian Dean. The technique itself revolves around building a network of backlinks to your content, in a sustainable, scalable, and results-driven way, to boost web traffic.
A key aspect of the Skyscraper Technique is building high-quality backlinks, from sites and sources which are already trusted platforms. Why? Because Google SEO algorithms favour high-quality content, so if a well-reputed site is recommending your content, then you have already quadrupled your chances of ranking higher in Google search engines.
Skyscraper Technique Steps
Are you ready to test out the Skyscraper Technique and watch your web traffic skyrocket? All it takes is a bit of research, some nifty marketing and SEO tools, implementing your strategy, and reviewing your moves!
1. Find Similar Content
Once you’ve identified your exact content niche, then it’s time to do some hunting and scout out your competition on the web. You can also head over to Reddit to find links to relevant content and similar topics, or use tools such as Site Explorer, Content Explorer, Keyword Explorer, SEMRush and Moz to carry out keyword research.
Once you have found another business site or platform which is in a similar field to your own, it’s time to pick out a specific piece of content on this site. It will most likely be a blog post, and should closely resemble the post on your own website which you want to optimise web traffic for using the Skyscraper Technique.
Not only should this other content be similar to your blog post topic, but it should boast a healthy amount of referring domains – 50 domains is a good starting metric. This means you are targeting content and pages which already have a lot of backlinks, which is a good indicator of their online authority.
2. Make Your Content Better
This is where the true trick and simple beauty of the Skyscraper Technique comes into play. Sure, the web is full of content which deals with similar topics to your own. But, as we know, only the very best content gets the magic web traffic it deserves.
So, using your previous research as a baseline, list out everything you can think of which you feel is missing from it, and which you could include in your own post to make it even more informative.
Could you make the post longer? Give better examples? Include some infographics and videos? Do you have any personal knowledge, expertise or anecdotes to add to the topic in question? When thinking of improvement areas, your main goal should be to make the post more useful for audiences and viewers. By asking yourself this question, you’ll be able to focus on creating something even better than the comparable posts.
3. Email Outreach
Here’s where the actionable work begins. It’s time to reach out to other websites to share the awesome piece of content you’ve just published (maybe the content creation should have been step 3 – but we trust you’re on the ball with that!).
However, here’s the catch – while of course you can blast an email to every website owner on planet earth, we’d recommend that you be a bit picky and strategic with your contacts. You want to get in touch with the people who will be interested in your content, either because they have shared similar content in the past, or write about it themselves.
The goal of email outreach is to give a slight nudge to share your brilliant, optimised piece of content on their own website – including, you guessed it, a backlink from their reputable, high ranking, authority confirmed website. Not only will this help you from an SEO perspective, it will make your post visible and accessible to an enormous range of new viewers, who are curious enough to click on the link and through to your site.
You’ll also increase your contacts, establish relationships, and hey, maybe you’ll be able to give their website and content a shout on your site in return!
Skyscraper Success
Does a 600% increase in web traffic sound totally impossible and too good to be true? Well, to reassure yourself before embarking on honing your own backlink-building skills, check out how other content marketers have successfully implemented the Skyscraper Technique with exceptional results.
Ryan Robinson gained 70k+ views after going through the steps mentioned above, while Brian Dean himself achieved a 652% increase in organic traffic by developing the Skyscraper Technique.
So get scouting, improving, and outreaching, and don’t forget to monitor your content analytics and watch your traffic reach skyscraper numbers!
(Psst! Don’t forget – if you need help creating awesome content, give us a shout.)
