Skyscraper link building is a three-step way to earn backlinks: find a page in your niche that already has lots of links, publish something clearly better on the same topic, then ask the sites linking to the old page if they’d like to link to yours instead. Brian Dean of Backlinko made it famous with a case study where he sent 160 outreach emails and landed 17 links, roughly an 11% hit rate, according to his original write-up.
It still works. But the version most people run, where “better” means longer and outreach means a template blasted to a scraped list, mostly doesn’t. Below I’ll show you how I’d run it today, where it goes wrong, and how to tell if it’s worth the effort for your site.
How skyscraper link building works
The name comes from a simple idea. If you’re standing next to the tallest building in town, people notice it. Build a taller one and the attention moves. In SEO terms, the “tall building” is the page that already ranks and gets cited for a topic. Your job is to make the page people would rather point to.
The logic holds because the sites that linked to the original page have already shown they care about the topic and are willing to link out. You’re not cold pitching random sites. You’re offering a better reference to people who already cite one.
What it isn’t: a link exchange, a paid placement or a guest post swap. Google’s spam policies define link spam as links created mainly to manipulate rankings, including buying links, excessive link exchanges and paid articles with followed links. Skyscraper outreach stays on the right side of that line as long as you’re simply pointing people to a useful page and leaving the choice to them.
Step 1: Find a page worth beating
Most failed campaigns fail here. People pick a page with lots of links that they can’t realistically beat, or one whose links came from places that will never reply.
Start with the keywords you want to rank for and look at the top results. Then run those URLs through a backlink tool such as Ahrefs, Semrush or Moz and check the referring domains. You’re looking for a page that is:
- Relevant to what you sell. Links to a page nobody on your site would read don’t help the pages that make you money.
- Linked from real sites. Dozens of referring domains from blogs, publications and resource pages. Not mostly scrapers, directories and forum profiles.
- Clearly beatable. Outdated stats, missing steps, dead tools, thin explanations, no visuals, or advice that’s now wrong.
Google search operators help here too. Searches like intitle:"resources" your topic or inurl:links your topic turn up resource pages that link to guides in your space. My post on Google search operators has more of these.
Step 2: Build something that’s actually better
“Ten times better” became a cliché, and it pushed a lot of people into writing 6,000-word posts nobody finishes. Length is rarely the reason someone links. Usefulness is. Here’s what tends to make a page worth swapping a link for:
| Weak upgrade | Strong upgrade |
|---|---|
| Same points, more words | A clearer answer to the core question, sooner |
| Recycled stats from other blogs | Original data, a survey, or your own tested examples |
| Stock images | Custom diagrams, screenshots or a comparison table |
| Old tools and dead links | Current tools, fixed links and dates where they matter |
| Generic advice anyone could write | First-hand experience and a clear point of view |
That last row matters more than it used to. Google’s guidance on helpful content and E-E-A-T rewards pages that show real experience. A copycat page with a bigger word count rarely ranks well, and people don’t want to cite it either. I go into this more in my guide to E-E-A-T and YMYL.
One more thing: make sure your page matches the search intent. If the top results are quick checklists and you publish a 40-minute read, you’ll struggle to rank, and ranking is what keeps a skyscraper page earning links after outreach stops.
Step 3: Reach out to the right people
Export the backlinks to the original page and clean the list hard. Remove:
- Scraper sites, link farms and auto-generated pages
- Forum posts, comments and social profiles
- Pages where the link is in a footer or sidebar, not the body
- Sites that clearly haven’t been updated in years
What’s left is usually a much shorter list. That’s good. You want people who maintain their pages, wrote the article themselves, and might reasonably update it.
Write emails people actually answer
Site owners get a lot of these. The ones that get a reply are short and specific:
- Use their name and mention the exact article where they link to the old page.
- Say in one line what your page adds. “It covers the latest tool changes” beats “it has more detail.”
- If the old link is broken or outdated, say so. That’s a real favour to them.
- Don’t demand a link. Ask if it’d be useful, and make it easy to say no.
- Send one polite follow-up. Then stop.
Before you send anything at volume, check that your sending domain is set up properly so you don’t land in spam. My post on email warm-up explains the basics.
Don’t skip promotion
Outreach to existing linkers is only one channel. Share the page where your audience already is, mention it when it really answers a question in a community, and link to it from relevant pages on your own site. Internal links help a new page get crawled and ranked faster, and a page that ranks earns links on its own.
Common reasons skyscraper campaigns fail
- The new page isn’t meaningfully better. If the prospect can’t spot the difference in ten seconds, they won’t swap the link.
- The topic doesn’t fit the business. You get links, but to a page that sends no leads or sales.
- Templated outreach at scale. Mass emails get ignored or marked as spam, and can hurt your domain’s sender reputation.
- Offering something in return. Once you’re trading links or paying for placement, it stops being skyscraper outreach and starts looking like the link schemes Google warns about.
- Giving up after one batch. Many links come later, from people who find the page because it ranks, not because you emailed them.
How to measure results
Track a small set of numbers for the target page, not just the site as a whole:
- New referring domains to the page, and how relevant they are
- Reply rate and link rate from your outreach list
- Rankings and clicks for the page’s main keywords in Google Search Console
- Whether rankings improved for the pages you link to internally from it
Give it a few months before you judge it. Links and rankings both lag behind the work.
Is skyscraper link building right for your business?
It suits sites with a topic that people actually reference: SaaS, B2B services, ecommerce brands with a teaching angle, and anyone who can bring original data. It’s a harder fit for small local businesses, where local citations, a strong Google Business Profile and local press usually move the needle faster.
If you’d rather have someone run the research, content and outreach for you, my link building service covers that, and my content SEO service handles the “build something better” part. Want a rough idea of what ongoing SEO support involves? Try the SEO cost calculator, or get in touch to talk it through.
FAQ
Does the skyscraper technique still work?
Yes, when the new page is clearly more useful and the outreach is personal. It works far less well when “better” just means longer and emails go out as a template to a big scraped list.
What’s a good success rate for skyscraper outreach?
There’s no fixed benchmark. Brian Dean’s well-known case study reported 17 links from 160 emails, about 11%. Results vary a lot by niche, list quality and how much better your page really is, so track your own reply and link rates and improve from there.
How many backlinks should the original page have?
Enough to make the effort worthwhile. Semrush’s guide to the technique suggests targeting pages with at least 50 to 100 referring domains from reputable sites. More important than the number is whether those sites are real, relevant and still active.
Is skyscraper link building against Google’s guidelines?
No. Asking people to link to a useful page is normal outreach. It crosses the line when you pay for links, trade links, or offer something in exchange, which Google’s spam policies treat as link spam.
How long does it take to see results?
Building the page and running outreach can take a few weeks. Ranking changes usually take longer, often a few months, because Google needs to recrawl the linking pages and reassess yours.