What Is Skyscraper SEO?

Are you frustrated about your business website’s low traffic levels?

You’ve probably heard tens of times that you need to be blogging, link building, and making sure your on-page and off-page SEO is in good shape. These tips seem easy enough, but executing them in a way that drives significant results is easier said than done.

If you’re sold on search engine optimization but aren’t sure how to start attracting your target audience with high-ranking pages, this post is for you.

Learn about how skyscraper SEO can help turn your site into a revenue-generating machine in weeks.

What Is Skyscraper SEO?

The SEO skyscraper technique starts with topic-based keyword research, creating a comprehensive content outline, and then delivering real insights. Your finished web page should exhaustively address the searcher intent behind your target keyword group. By using skyscraper SEO, you start driving traffic for several long-tail keywords within days.

3 Steps to Executing the SEO Skyscraper Technique

The concept behind skyscraper SEO is simple, but the execution is difficult. Once you identify what search engines believe people are looking for when they search for phrases related to an underlying topic, you can include every piece of relevant information on your page or blog post.

For example, if you’re writing an article about how to do plastic surgery SEO, you’ll need to uncover every need that a searcher might have pertaining to that topic. Maybe you’ll find out that searchers are looking for link building strategies for that industry, how to leverage reviews with schema markup, and how to incorporate FAQs on their procedure pages.

If you can identify and address searcher intent better than any related existing article, you are on your way to generating significant traffic.

Here’s how you begin using the SEO skyscraper technique.

1. Do a Google Search for Your Target Keyword

To learn what Google (or Bing) thinks is valuable content, do a search for your target phrase. Before you target just any keyword, use a keyword research tool like the Google Ads Keyword Planner, or SEMrush to make sure that your phrase has recorded search volume.

Once you’ve searched for your target keyword, take the top three results and plug them into the SEMrush Organic Research tool. This will help you gather real performance data on these top pages.

2. Compile a List of the Most Relevant Keywords

The SEMrush Organic Research report will give you a list of keywords for which these top pages are ranking. Based on your industry knowledge of the topic you’re searching for, some of these terms may not be relevant.

Use your own judgement about your niche market segment to determine which keywords are relevant and useful to searchers. You might add these keywords into a spreadsheet or doc that you plan on using during the content creation stage in part three of the skyscraper SEO process.

Once you’ve compiled a list of relevant keywords for the top search result, do the the same research for the second, third, and even fourth results.

There’s a chance that the top search result ranked for every keyword (and then some) that the subsequent results did. Unfortunately, this isn’t usually the case. Because each of the top search results includes different content by different subject matter experts, they may rank for keywords for which the #1 result does not.

3. Create an Outline of the Most Comprehensive Topic

Now that you’ve created a complete list of key phrases, create an outline that addresses each keyword. For example, if you have some “how to” keywords in your list, make sure the outline for your new page has a corresponding “how to” heading and section. If your keyword list includes “pricing” and “cost” terms, make sure you have a section with price ranges and estimates.

Once you develop an outline, you can apply your own industry knowledge and targeted research to the page. This will help ensure that your content completely satisfies all user dimensions for your target topic. In turn, search engines will serve your web pages when queried for related information.

Why Doesn’t Everyone Use Skyscraper SEO?

Not everyone is intentional about their content creation. While you may be interested in learning how to SEO a site, your competitors may be interested in writing their pages based on what they think users ought to know.

There is some utility behind this approach. While it isn’t going to harvest the existing demand of searchers, it could be valuable to an organization’s brand.

For example, if the internet was around during the days of Henry Ford, you’d probably see the man blogging about cars and internal combustion engines while the competition is harvesting existing demand around horses and wagons.

You might be familiar with the quote, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” While SEO best practices could draw traffic to an innovator’s website, catering to the majority and laggard consumers due to high search volume may actually stunt growth that could facilitate a competitive advantage. If your marketing strategy is led by SEO, you might never “invent the car.”

Now that you understand the methodology behind the SEO skyscraper technique, go out and try it for yourself. If you run into any interesting challenges, please leave a comment about it on this post or connect with me on LinkedIn for more guidance.