What is the Skyscraper Technique?
The Skyscraper Technique is a three-step link building method: find a page in your topic that has already earned a lot of backlinks, publish a clearly better page on the same subject, then email the sites that link to the original and ask them to link to yours instead [1].
Brian Dean of Backlinko named and published the method on April 18, 2013 [1]. The name comes from his metaphor: nobody wonders which building is the eighth tallest in the world, because people are drawn to the tallest one. The aim is to find the tallest "skyscraper" in a topic and build something taller on top of it [1].
A typical example: a site notices that a two-year-old "SEO checklist" has links from 300 sites. It publishes a more current and more complete checklist, pulls the list of sites linking to the old one from a backlink tool, and emails each of them with a short note suggesting the newer page as a replacement or addition.
How does the Skyscraper Technique work?
The Skyscraper Technique works in three steps, as Brian Dean set them out [1]:
- Find link-worthy content. Use a backlink tool to find pages in your topic with many referring domains.
- Make something even better. Dean's original advice was to make the new page longer, more up to date, better designed or more thorough [1].
- Reach out to the right people. Email the sites that already link to the original page, because they have shown they link to content on that subject.
The logic is sound in one respect that still holds: the people who linked to a page on a subject are the best-qualified prospects for a link to a newer page on the same subject. What has changed since 2013 is how those people respond to the email, and what "better" has to mean for them to act on it.
Where does the 11% Skyscraper Technique success rate come from?
The 11% success rate comes from a single outreach campaign Brian Dean ran in 2013: he sent 160 emails and earned 17 links [1]. It is not an industry average, and it was never presented as one.
The figure is still quoted in many guides as the rate a reader should expect. Three things make that a poor benchmark:
- The sample was 160 emails, from one sender, on one page, in one niche (SEO, where site owners link to SEO resources readily).
- The template was new. In 2013 few site owners had received an email pointing out a page they linked to and offering a better one. Once the method became famous, the same template reached the same inboxes many times over. Ahrefs lists template overuse as the first reason the technique now fails [3].
- The sender had a known brand. Ahrefs also lists brand dependency among the reasons the technique fails: a better page from an unknown site is a harder ask [3].
Other figures circulate too. Search Engine Land's guide repeats a claim that success rates have fallen from 10 to 20% down to 1 to 3% [7]. That claim is attributed to a link building vendor's own reporting, not to a published dataset. No independent study with a disclosed method has measured Skyscraper outreach success rates across many campaigns, so any single number should be treated as one practitioner's experience.
Does the Skyscraper Technique still work?
The Skyscraper Technique still works only when the new page is better in a way the linker cares about, and the old version of "better" (longer) no longer qualifies. A longer page, sent with a template email, to a list scraped from a backlink tool, is the version that has largely stopped working.
Practitioners are split. Ahrefs reports that 61% of SEOs it surveyed believe the technique still works, while only 18% use it, citing Aira's State of Link Building report [3]. Believing a tactic works and choosing to spend time on it are different answers, and the gap says a lot.
Four things weakened the classic Skyscraper Technique:
- Length stopped being a credible improvement. Google says plainly that it has no preferred word count, and asks whether content mainly summarizes what others say without adding much value [4]. A page that is "bigger" because it rewrites the top ten results is exactly that.
- Topics got saturated. Most topics with link-worthy pages already have several "ultimate guides". A linker who already cites one has little reason to swap it for a near copy [7].
- Outreach fatigue. The template is recognizable, and many site owners delete it on sight [3].
- AI answers summarize compiled guides. Search Insider's view: a page whose main value is gathering known information in one place is the kind of page an AI answer can replace for the reader, which makes it less compelling for a linker to cite. Pages with original data, tools or first-hand findings do not have that problem.
What is the Skyscraper Technique 2.0?
The Skyscraper Technique 2.0 is Brian Dean's 2018 revision of his own method, which shifted the focus from bigger content to content that matches search intent [2]. Dean published it on November 1, 2018, arguing that people searching for "SEO checklist" want a checklist, not a long case study, whatever its other qualities [2].
Version 2.0 is mostly a ranking method, not an outreach method: satisfy what the searcher wants, then improve the user experience of the page [2]. It is worth knowing because it shows the technique's own author moved away from "longer is better" five years after naming it, while many guides still teach the 2013 version.
When was the Skyscraper Technique introduced?
The Skyscraper Technique was introduced by Brian Dean in a Backlinko case study on April 18, 2013 [1]. Dean revised the method in 2018, and Backlinko, the site that published both versions, was acquired by Semrush in January 2022 [2] [6].
2013: Brian Dean names the method
Dean's original post reported that organic traffic to his whole site doubled in 14 days after a Skyscraper campaign, and that 160 outreach emails produced 17 links [1]. Ahrefs reports that the post itself has earned more than 10,000 backlinks [3].
2013 to 2017: the template spreads
Through the mid 2010s, the Skyscraper Technique became a standard part of link building courses, and Dean's outreach template was copied widely. The more it was used, the less it worked, because the same prospects received the same email from many senders [3].
2018: Skyscraper Technique 2.0
On November 1, 2018, Dean published Skyscraper Technique 2.0, centered on search intent rather than length [2].
2022: Backlinko joins Semrush
In January 2022, Semrush acquired Backlinko [6]. The original Skyscraper post remains online and has been updated since, most recently in 2024 [1].
What is the difference between the Skyscraper Technique and broken link building?
The Skyscraper Technique asks a site to link to your page because your page is better, while broken link building asks a site to link to your page because one of its existing links is dead. Both target sites that already link to a topic, but broken link building gives the site owner a problem to fix, which is a stronger reason to reply.
| Skyscraper Technique | Broken link building | |
|---|---|---|
| Prospect list | Sites linking to a popular live page | Sites linking to a page that no longer works |
| Reason to act | Your page is better | Their link is broken |
| Asks the linker to | Add or swap a working link | Replace a dead link |
| Main weakness | "Better" is a judgment the linker may not share | Depends on finding dead pages with many links |
Many campaigns combine the two: when building a Skyscraper prospect list, check whether any of the prospect pages also contain dead links, and mention them.
What is the difference between the Skyscraper Technique and a linkable asset?
A linkable asset is any page built to earn links, while the Skyscraper Technique is one specific way of building and promoting such a page: by improving on an existing page and pitching its linkers. A linkable asset can be original research, a free tool or a calculator that has no existing "skyscraper" to beat. A Skyscraper page is always defined relative to a competitor's page.
How do you do the Skyscraper Technique today?
To do the Skyscraper Technique today, change what "better" means and how you ask, not the three basic steps:
- Pick a page whose linkers had a reason to link. Look at why sites linked to the original: a statistic, a definition, a tool, a chart. The reason tells you what your page must do better.
- Improve on that reason, not on length. Add original data, a correction, a fresher dataset, a working tool or a clearer method. North Star Inbound lists "thinking longer is always better" among the main reasons the technique fails [8].
- Segment the prospects. A site that cited a single statistic needs a different pitch from a site that lists the page as further reading. Ahrefs lists poor segmentation as a common failure [3].
- Write each email as if it were the only one. Name the exact page and the exact reason your page would serve its readers better.
- Never pay or trade for the link. Outreach that asks for an editorial link is fine. Exchanging money, goods or services for a followed link is link spam under Google's policies [5].
When should you use the Skyscraper Technique?
Use the Skyscraper Technique when you can genuinely beat a heavily linked page on the thing its linkers cited it for, such as a stale dataset you can update or a broken tool you can replace. Skip it when your only improvement is more words or nicer design, when the topic already has several competing "ultimate guides", or when your site has no track record in the topic.
For most sites in 2026, the stronger version of the same idea is to publish something the existing skyscraper cannot offer, such as original data or a maintained statistics page, and then pitch it to the people who linked to the old page.