skyscraper technique

Brian Dean of Backlinko coined the term in a 2013 case study built around a guide to Google’s ranking factors. His outreach sent 160 emails, earned 17 links (about an 11% hit rate), and roughly doubled his organic traffic inside two weeks.

The three steps

1. Find a page in your niche that already pulls a lot of backlinks (Ahrefs suggests 50+ referring domains as a rough floor).
2. Publish something clearly better: more current data, more depth, cleaner design, fewer filler entries.
3. Email the sites that linked to the original and pitch yours as the upgrade.

It works because editors link to what looks like the best available resource, and a site that already cited the topic is a warm prospect. It stalls for predictable reasons: the original Backlinko email template is now widely recognized and deleted on sight, “more” is not the same as better (100 mediocre tools lose to 15 useful ones), and pages earn links partly on the author’s authority, not word count alone. Relevance and search intent matter too. A longer post that answers a different question than the pages already ranking will not win their links.

As of 2026 it is a mature, sometimes overused tactic. In an Ahrefs poll of 1,242 SEOs, 61% said it still works when executed well. Actual adoption is lower: Aira’s State of Link Building report, cited by Ahrefs, put active use at around 18%.