A few months ago, I get this email out of the blue. The email said, Hey, Brian,  when I read your skyscraper technique post a couple months ago, I was  intrigued. I had recently taken over SEO at our blog that was receiving very little  organic traffic after many hours spent creating, promoting and manually link  building. This happened on Monday. That's us at number one. I'm Brian Dean,  the founder of Backlinko, and in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how  Emil got his site to the number one spot in Google, step by step. When I first  launched my blog, backlinko.com I knew that I was entering the insanely  competitive online marketing space. I was a one man show banging out articles  from my apartment, and I was competing against huge marketing teams from  sites like Forbes, Search Engine Land and inc.com and I knew that to have a  chance against these mega brands, I need to do something crazy to stand out.  That's when I decided to use a white hat SEO strategy called The Skyscraper  Technique, in this single strategy, increased my new site's organic search  engine traffic by 110.9% in 14 days. One day, one of my blog readers, Emil  Shore, saw my results and decided to give the Skyscraper Technique a shot,  and it quickly boosted his site's traffic by 59% and today, because Emil's site  ranks number one for his target keyword, his piece of content brings in over  10,000 page views per month like clockwork. Now that I've showed you how well the skyscraper technique works, it's time for me to walk you through the step by  step process. Step number one, find content that already ranks for your target  keyword. Step two, create something even better. Step three, promote your  content. So your first step is to find content that's already ranking for your target  keyword. Because Emil's business sells healthy snacks for offices, he realized  that a keyword like wellness program ideas is something that his target  customers search for, so he Googled employee wellness program ideas,  wellness programs and corporate wellness programs to get a sense of what was already out there, and he noticed that the content that was ranking on Google's  first page had the same flaws. For example, four of the top 10 results for  employee wellness ideas were PDFs. Needless to say, most people rather read  content in a blog post than in a PDF. Emil also noticed that the list of wellness  program ideas lacked important details. In fact, most were literally just lists of  ideas without any information on how to execute them. Emil also saw that the  content on the first page lacked multimedia, like images, videos, charts and  screenshots. According to a study by skyward content with at least one image  gets an average of 94% more social media views than content without an  image. That's why it's so important to use images in your content. Last but not  least. But Emil noticed that the content on the first page was boring. Obviously,  employee wellness programs isn't as interesting as something like cute cats. But that doesn't mean that your content has to be boring, like this, as I'll show you in a minute. Emil worked hard to make sure that his content was fun and  interesting, but first, it's time for me to show you step number two of the 

skyscraper technique, which is to create something better than the content you  just found, despite what you may have heard about White Hat SEO, first page  rankings have nothing to do with keeping your site updated with fresh quality  content, really. Instead, your ability to rank in Google depends on two things.  Thing One, create something that deserves to rank number one. Thing two,  promote that content seriously. That's it. Question is, how do you create content  that deserves to be number one? Let me answer that by showing you exactly  how Emil executed step number two of the skyscraper technique. First, Emil  listed more program ideas than any other guide. Most of the content that Emil  found listed about 10 wellness program ideas. But Emil knew that there are way  more than just 10 wellness program ideas out there, so he set out to list a  whopping 120 ideas. Unfortunately, Emil realized that listing out 120 ideas was  easier said than done, so Emil asked his team to get employee wellness experts to contribute ideas to the post, and many of these experts were more than  happy to lend a hand. Emil also reached out to bloggers in the wellness space,  and they hooked Emil up with some amazing ideas that he could use in his  content. And as you'll see in a minute, these expert contributions generated lots  of bonus shares and traffic to Emil's post. Next, Emil added multimedia to his  content. Like I mentioned earlier, most of the articles ranking on page one had  zero images, and Emil knew that publishing a post with lots of multimedia would  be a huge competitive advantage. That's why he included a ton of high quality  images and helpful videos. Finally, Emil made sure his content was fun, upbeat  and. Interesting, because the truth about content marketing is this, whether you  write about life insurance or life hacking, your content simply can't be boring.  Emil knew this, and that's why he made sure his copy was fun and compelling.  And once he edited his post, a meal hit publish and his content was live. The  end result 121 employee wellness program ideas for your office. Now that Emil's post was live, it was time to sit back, relax and let the backlinks roll in, right,  wrong, like you. Emil realized that hitting the publish button was just the  beginning for your content to stand out today you need to actively promote it,  which leads us to step number three of the skyscraper technique process, which is to promote your content. Yes, publishing great content is important, and that's  why Emil spent so much time on a single post. But unless you promote your  content, it's going to get lost in the sea of blog posts, YouTube videos, Facebook posts and emails that come out every day with that here are the four  promotional strategies that Emil used to get the word out about his new piece of  content. First, Emil reached out to influencers to let them know about his post  before he even published it. I call this pre outreach. Specifically, Emil found  blogs that wrote about workplace wellness and sent them a heads up about his  upcoming post. When the blogger said, Sure, send it over. Emil sent them a  heads up. This pre outreach led to dozens of social shares, but also a nice  contextual backlink. Next, Emil used something called the content roadshow. 

Here's how it works. First, Emil used Google to find blogs that wrote about  employee wellness, human resources and other related topics, and when he  found a high quality piece of content around one of those topics, he emailed the  author. This technique also led to a high quality backlink. Once he was done  emailing bloggers, Emil reached out to brands that he mentioned in his post. For example, Emil mentioned authority nutrition in his content, so he sent them a  message to let them know that they were featured. And as you can see here,  these brands were more than happy to share Emil's post with their audience.  Finally, Emil hit up the experts that contributed ideas to his post. Remember  when I told you that Emil asked a bunch of workplace wellness experts to  contribute an idea? Here's an example. Well, when the post went live, Emil let  the experts know that he used their idea in his post. Not only were the experts  happy to share Emil's content on social media, but one of them even linked to  Emil's post. There you have it, the three step process that led to a first page  ranking and a 59% boost in organic traffic. Did you get something valuable from  today's video? If so, make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel right now.  That way you won't miss out on any actionable videos like this one. Now I want  to turn it over to you. What do you think about the Skyscraper Technique? Or  maybe you have a question about the process? Either way, leave a quick  comment below right now. More. Okay, no, it's good. Blah, blah, blah. I gotta,  like, sit back, relax. Did I say I can't? Sounds weird. Okay, all right. Gas, water. 



Last modified: Wednesday, September 3, 2025, 1:29 PM