The skyscraper technique is a link building method popularized by SEO writer Brian Dean in the mid-2010s. You find a page in your topic that has attracted many backlinks, publish something meaningfully better, then contact the sites linking to the original and suggest your version. It still works in some niches, but the template outreach it inspired became so common that editors now ignore most of it.
The three steps
The method is simple, which is part of why it spread.
- Find linked content: use a backlink tool to see which pages in your topic have the most referring domains
- Make it better: more current, more accurate, more complete, better designed or backed by original data
- Reach out: contact sites linking to the original and explain what your version adds
Why it often disappoints
"Better" usually ends up meaning "longer", which is not what editors want. A writer who linked to a resource years ago has little reason to update their post for a similar page. And the outreach template ("I noticed you linked to X, I wrote something even better") is now so familiar that it is easy to dismiss.
The approach works best when the new page is clearly different in a way a linker would care about: the old resource is outdated, has errors, has been taken down, or lacks data the new one provides.
A SaaS-friendly version
SaaS companies often have data or product insight that generic content sites do not. Rebuilding a well-linked but stale resource around your own anonymized data, or turning it into an interactive tool, gives linkers a concrete reason to switch.
Example
Updating a stale benchmark
An illustrative cloud cost platform, Spendhollow, finds a widely linked article on cloud pricing comparisons that has not been updated in several years and cites old prices. It publishes a regularly updated comparison drawn from public pricing pages, with a changelog. Its outreach points out the specific outdated figures in the old article. A handful of writers update their links, and new articles cite the comparison directly.
Common mistakes
Equating better with longer
Length rarely persuades anyone to change a link. Accuracy, freshness and unique data do.
Mass-emailing every linker
Many linking pages are old, abandoned or irrelevant. Filter for active sites where the update genuinely helps.
Questions
It can, when the new resource is clearly more useful and outreach is targeted. Untargeted template outreach tends to get ignored.
