Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days
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Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days

Brian Dean

Written by Brian Dean

Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days

Here’s the brutal truth about link building:

There are WAY too many people in internet marketing today that think “great content” is enough.

They say, “if I publish great stuff, people will naturally link to me”.

If only it were that easy…

If you’re serious about getting high quality links, you need to be very systematic with how you create and promote your content.

Otherwise, you’re taking the β€œcooked spaghetti approach” to SEO: throwing a bunch of stuff against a wall and hoping something sticks.

Well, today I’m going to show you a technique that almost guarantees that you get high-quality links from every piece of content that you publish.

Keep reading to learn how…

The Skyscraper Technique: (Content Marketing for Link Builders)

On April 18th 2013, I publishedΒ Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List.

After executing “The Skyscraper Technique“, the number of backlinks to that page shot up like a rocket:

Google ranking factors – Referring domains growth

More importantly, organic search traffic to my entire site – not just that post – doubled in just 14 days:

Backlinko traffic increase – April 2013

As a nice bonus, that single post has driven more than 2 milion referral visitors to my site so far.

Google ranking factors post – Total pageviews

The best part?

You can do the same thing for your site… even if you don’t have a Fortune 500 marketing budget or connections with influential bloggers.Β 

The 3-Steps to Using “The Skyscraper Technique” To Get Quality Links and Targeted Traffic

There are 3 steps to The Skyscraper Technique.

And I go over all of them in this short-and-sweet video:

Like I mentioned in the video above, here are the 3-steps that make up The Skyscraper Technique:

Step 1: Find link-worthy content

Step 2: Make something even better

Step 3: Reach out to the right people

Here’s why this technique works so well (and what it has to do with a skyscraper):

Have you ever walked by a really tall building and said to yourself:

“Wow, that’s amazing! I wonder how big the 8th tallest building in the world is.”

Of course not.

It’s human nature to be attracted to the best.

And what you’re doing here is finding the tallest “skyscraper” in your space… and slapping 20 stories to the top of it.

All of a sudden YOU have the content that everyone wants to talk about (and link to).

Now: The Skyscraper Technique is just one of many strategies that I use to land first page Google rankings. I reveal the others in my premium business training course, SEO That Works.

Step #1: Find Proven Linkable Assets

A linkable asset is the foundation of any successful link-focused content marketing campaign (including this one).

I’m not sure who coined the phrase “Linkable Asset”, but it’s the perfect description of what you want to create: a high-value page that you can leverage for links over and over again.

Keep in mind that linkable asset is not “12 Things Spider Man Taught Me About Social Media Marketing” link bait nonsense.

It’s content so awesome, so incredible, and so useful that people can’t help but login to their WordPress dashboard and add a link to your site.

But how do you know if your linkable asset is going to be a huge success… or a total flop?

That’s easy: find content that’s already generated a ton of links.

Here’s how:

Now it’s time for step 2…

Step #2: Make Something Even Better

Your next step is to take what’s out there and blow it out of the water.

Here’s how you can take existing content to the next level:

Make It Longer

In some cases, publishing an article that’s simply longer or includes more items will do the trick.

If you find a link magnet with a title like “50 Healthy Snack Ideas”, publish a list of 150 (or even 500).

In my case,Β  I decided to list all 200 ranking factors… or die trying.

The first 50 were a breeze. 50-100 were really hard. 100-150 were really, really hard. And 150-200 were damn near impossible.

It took 10 gallons of coffee and 20 hours of sitting in front of my laptop (don’t worry, I took bathroom breaks)…

…but in the end, I had something that was clearly better than anything else out there.

More Up-To-Date

If you can take an out-of-date piece of content and spruce it up, you’ve got yourself a winner.

For example, most of the other ranking factor lists were sorely outdated and lacked important ranking factors, like social signals:

Vaughn's – Google ranking factors

If you find something with old information, create something that covers many of the same points… but update it with cutting-edge content.

Better Designed

Sometimes, a visually stunning piece of content can generate a lot more links and social shares than something similar on an ugly page.

Just check out Help Scout’s Customer Acquisition Strategies for Entrepreneurs:

Help Scout – Customer acquisition

This guide is a curated list of links to other internet marketing sites.

And the page has generated a lot of buzz because it’s beautifully designed.

For my guide, I added a nice banner at the top:

Backlinko – Google ranking factors

More Thorough

Most lists posts are just a bland list of bullet points without any meaty content that people can actually use.

But if you add a bit of depth for each item on your list, you have yourself a list post that’s MUCH more valuable.

In my case, I noticed that the other ranking factor lists lacked references and detail:

Performance Media Placement – Google ranking factors

So I made sure each and every point on my list had a brief description (with a reference):

Google ranking factors – Item descriptions

Important Note: I recommend that you beat the existing content on every level: length, design, current information etc.

This will make it objectively clear that YOU have the better piece of content.

This is really important when you start getting the word out…

Step #3: Reach Out to The Right People

Email outreach is the linchpin of the Skyscraper Technique.

It’s similar to straight-up link begging, but with a VERY important twist.

Instead of emailing random people, you’re reaching out to site owners that have already linked out to similar content.

When you qualify prospects like this, you know that:

1. They run a site in your niche.

2. They’re interested in your topic.

3. They’ve already linked to an article on that topic.

Now it’s just a matter of giving them a friendly heads up about your clearly superior content.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Export all of the links pointing to your competitor’s content into a spreadsheet.

Ahrefs – Export backlinks

2. Weed out referring pages that don’t make sense to contact (forums, article directories, etc.).Β In my case, after cleaning up the list, I had 160 very solid prospects to reach out to.

3. I emailed all 160 of them using this template:

(I obviously personalized and tweaked this template for everyone I reached out to.)

Even I was shocked at the overwhelmingly positive response:

Outreach email backlink

Out of 160 emails I landed 17 links: an 11% success rate.

Considering that these were cold emails that asked for a link in the first email, an 11% success rate is pretty amazing.

You may be thinking, “17 links, that’s it?”.

But remember it’s aboutΒ quality, not quantity.

There were a lot of gems in that group of 17 links.

Besides, just look at the meteoric rise in organic traffic that those 17 links got me (in a very short time period, no less).

Obviously, there were a few links to that page that came organically, but some of the best were from The Skyscraper Technique.

Now You Try It

I hope you can see the potential of The Skyscraper Technique for your site and your business.

Yes, it takes hard work to create something great.

But with this strategy you already know ahead of time that your hard work is going to pay off (unlike pumping out reams of content hoping that something goes viral).

760 Comments

  1. Hey Brian,

    This is awesome content mate, thank-you. I love anything case studyish, especially when it’s start to finish and you’ve done a really high quality job. Appreciate the insights.

    Glen

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      My pleasure, Glen. πŸ™‚ Let me know how it works for you.

  2. Hey Brian,
    Great Post, really great strategy… I think Reaching Out to The Right People is the hardest hurdle when promoting your content whether is great or astounding content if no can see or read it, then your kinda at a loose end regarding authority and brand awareness not to mention high quality links.

    Cheers

    Danny

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad to hear that you enjoyed the post, Danny. You’re right: finding the right people to contact is really hard. That’s what I like about this strategy: you’re targeting people who are very likely to link to your content (because they’ve already linked to similar stuff in the past). That makes it easy to get the word out…even if you don’t already have a following.

  3. Hey Brian, nicely done and written.
    I also noticed since I started blogging recently that people rehash old ideas but add nothing. But I had not made the leap that you made, or at least not a leap of THAT size!! Fantastic idea. It is going on my list of things I need to do as a new blogger to try to get at least a trickle of traffic :>

    Will start following your blog!
    cheers
    ashley

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks, Ashley! This is a great way to drive links and traffic to your new blog. Let me know if you have any questions about the process.

  4. Chetan Avatar Chetansays:

    Once again, a fabulous post.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Chetan! I aim to please πŸ™‚

  5. Cool idea. But why do you have “link-building” as a topic for examples? I guess that would make this a link-building article for link-builders about link-building in the niche of link-building from link-building sites who also link to a link-building article, which gets a whole lot of links.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks, Josh. To answer your question: I guess I’m a bit obsessed with the subject. But the technique can be effective in any niche (like guitar lessons) :-).

      1. You’re awesome Brian. I’ll have to try it out.

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Let me know how it works for you, Josh!

      1. Hi Brian,
        You mention using this in a niche but a lot of the details don’t seem to work for niches. For example, you mentioned having 100 linking root domains in OSE’s Top Pages but in a niche they aren’t likely to have that much.
        My niche is marketing specifically for software companies and while I LOVE this article because it can help me with clients, I’m not seeing how it translates well for niches. Do you have a version for niches? Or, how would you modify to get significant traffic for smaller niches?
        Thanks,
        Jason

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Jason, that’s true. In the case of smaller niches you’ll need to go a bit lower with some of the numbers. Don’t let the details stop you from trying it out. I’ve seen The Skyscraper Technique work in some WEIRD niches.

  6. carl Avatar carlsays:

    Brian, I love this post and i can see lots of scope with this concept that you have shared. I will give it a try.
    thanks again. Question if you dont mind me asking, do you have space for advert on your sites? also can you share the link to the site you used for example on this post.
    thanks

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds great Carl! Let me know how it works for you. I actually don’t have advertising on the site at the moment. Do you mean the example of the old ranking factors post?

  7. Andrii Avatar Andriisays:

    Been away for a while. Glad to see you still publish quality content!
    Good job!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad to have you back, Andrii!

  8. Hey Brian,
    Thanks for sharing it. I’ll definitely try this link building strategy. You’ve given us proofs and I think it is a truly link magnet for one’s site. Cool!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad you liked the post, Venchito. Send me an email if you have any questions.

  9. Andrew Blachut Avatar Andrew Blachutsays:

    I like the way you reverse engineer the task of getting links and the skyscraper method looks very sound indeed. I would be interested if you ever turn it into a product or service because even though I love the theory I’m not certain I’m cut out to action it…even though your explanation is thorough. Running my business 12 hours a day 7 days a week leaves little time so outsourcing is critical for me these days.
    Andrew – Australia

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad to hear that you like the post. But you’re right: this does take quite a bit of time to implement. It’s possible to outsource each step (finding content that’s already linked to, creating the linkable asset, and email outreach) if you’re busy.

      1. Ayah Avatar Ayahsays:

        Hi Brian,
        You’re right it does require time but I did manage to create my content. It’s in the finance field so I hired a technical finance writer after I did the draft to clean it up to meet industry standards and to make it better than my competitors.

        However, i do have a question. Do you have to manually get the emails after downloading the links or are they included in the report? I used OSE to download the inbound links and I’m stuck. Was just wondering because i assumed the emails would be included…:)

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Ayah, you have to manually find the emails.

  10. Thanks for the information on OSE and the top linking pages technique. Just another way to perform valuable competitor research!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad you liked the OSE top pages tip, Liz πŸ™‚

  11. Anisul @ seo-genius Avatar Anisul @ seo-geniussays:

    Hey Brian, Well put Man! What other tools you recommed other than topsy? I did some quick search on my niche and didn’t really find any existing quality articles . Link building is a broad niche so what do you suggest for other smaller niches where there is little scope of creating awesome contents? Especially if i am in a niche where I know very little about that niche πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad you liked it Anisul. If you can’t find anything in Topsy, you may want to search in Google for keywords in your niche. If that work you may want to broaden your niche a bit. For example, if you were in the carpeting niche you could look for articles in the home improvement, home decor, or DIY organization niches.

  12. You hit the nail right on the head, I don’t have a Fortune 500 marketing budget or connections but I do have time to work on your approach, thanks. Also have been looking over your Google’s 200 Ranking Factors looks good so far, but let me get to work on these links first.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good, Virgil! Send me an email if you run into any problems.

  13. Brianna Wills Avatar Brianna Willssays:

    Hi Brian Dean, ( i am little weak in english language, so please dear with me) you have published a great stuff with case-study.. After ready your post, i feel that you are a perfect person to ask this question.. This question is related to link building method… i am doing seo for web development company and website has more than 2lac backlinks, majority of backlinks come from social bookmarking, article and press release submission.. in this recent penguin 2.0 update, i lost my ranking on majority of keywords.. Could you please tell me what strategy should i implement to recover my keywords?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      I’d start a fresh campaign that mixes in a bunch of powerful strategies, like Funnel Links, broken link building, infographics etc.

  14. I was there at QuickSprout and found you to get valuable helps for solving my link building doubts and my goodness that latest case study is solving one of my biggest doubt that why and how people would link to a quality content.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad I could help you out, Robin. Contrary to what many SEOs say, people DO link to quality content: you just need to know who to ask and how to ask them.

  15. Hi Brian,

    I really love your approach. I’ll try this method and hopefully I’ll get some high quality links pointing to my blog.
    Thanks!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Definitely try it out, Sita. It takes work, but the payoff is huge.

  16. @brian, would like to make the list in german as well the infographic for all german speaking seo people. i will refer for your to your site… would that be okey for you?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good to me, Mike.

  17. Christopher Hofman Avatar Christopher Hofmansays:

    Hi Brian, great article. I did something similar some weeks ago, doing a top 25 of most expensive dimain names, as the lists out there were not updated. You gave me the idea to extend it to a top 50 and contact site owners. Thanks for the inspiration,
    Christopher

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks, Christopher! Yup: 50 should do better than 25. In general, the longer the list the more links and shares it gets πŸ™‚

      1. Louisa Avatar Louisasays:

        Totally agree, but have you ever thought about a way to automate all those emails?

        It takes a lot of time to send out 160+ emails, so I was wondering if you knew of a tool that could do it?

        Thanks.

  18. Once again you prove that your blog is one of the top SEO blogs around. Fabulous work Brian!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks for your support (as always), Ed!

    1. Dushyant Avatar Dushyantsays:

      Yeah that’s true i’m glued with each and every posts that Brian creates,Keep up the good work.

      1. New to the site, thanks for the article Brian… I need to set my priorities straight! Been doing this for a long time but never once had any form of decent traffic on any of my website.

  19. I love to read case-studies and this was awesome.. Everyone wants free backlinks and too much traffic on their blogs but most of the blogger are missing right approach to get it.

    Your study is superb and I am going to work on one infographics to get more out of it. πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re right: this is a great technique for link building. I’d love to hear how the strategy works out for you.

  20. sagbee C Avatar sagbee Csays:

    This Is What I call “sweet Juice” That is so cool tricks πŸ™‚

    Am gonna use this tricks into another level. πŸ‘Ώ

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Rock on Sagbee!

  21. Terry Kyle Avatar Terry Kylesays:

    Damn Brian – I gotta get back to work and stop hanging out here! Like how you branded the technique a lot too. Pure Awesomeness.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re always welcome to hang out here, Terry! I really appreciate all of your support from day 1. See you at Traffic Planet!

  22. Hi Brian,
    1- I have to disagree with your example about spaghetti, as “marketing” by its nature is the process of trying out things. Some work, some don’t. We learn from our experience and mine what works, weeding out what doesn’t. Marketing is endless, you can always do more.

    2 – I’d like to see an example of content marketing/link building that is NOT in the SEO/online marketing niche. Could you provide us with a sample of something from a client of yours in a totally unrelated niche? Take us through each step, document your results (in terms of traffic and links). Share the time it takes you, the challenges you faced. Drop me a line when you do, I’d love to see it.
    Thanks,
    Mike

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks for sharing your insights, Mike. You’re 100% right: marketing is about experimenting and testing. But I like to experiment within a proven framework. I’m actually working on a case study that outlines The Skyscraper Technique in a non-IM niche. I’ll definitely give you a heads up when it goes live.

  23. Hi Brian,
    I have been a member of your site/email newsletter for a few weeks now (found you via Neil Patel). I am finding your posts very valuable! And this post in particular has given me a great idea!!
    Cheers,
    Josh

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Happy to hear that, Josh. The Skyscraper Technique might be my favorite link building strategy of all time because it works so incredibly well. Thanks for reading.

  24. Nice work Brian
    I will try that
    Gretings from Denmark

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Morten. Sounds good. Let me know how it goes.

  25. Great in-depth study, Brian! Your website has a lot of great tips. I subscribed to your newsletter as well. Thank you.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad you liked it, Lisa. And thanks for signing up to the newsletter πŸ™‚

  26. Good stuff Brian. i actually stumbled across your 200 ranking factor post previous to reading this post – awesome stuff!
    I’m currently trying to adopt the technique for two of our clients, one is in the office refurbishment industry and the other in the hotel linen trade. I’m stuck with the office refurbishment client but have an idea for the hotel linen client: Something along the lines of “How to promote your Hotel, Guesthouse or B&B online”. It will contain lists of sites that feature hotels (i.e. expedia,etc), lists of UK awards for hotels, lists of marketing ideas for small hotels (i.e. local radio, website, local paper, local complimentary businesses, etc) and sites they should get added to so they gain reviews (Trip Advisor, etc). Do you think it’s a good idea Brian? Thanks πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      That idea sounds PERFECT, Anthony. In addition to other hotel blogs, you can also reach out to travel sites (where a lot of hoteliers hang out) and get them to link to your new guide.

      1. Great! Thanks for the feedback and the outreach suggestion. It’s time to put the wheels in motion πŸ™‚

  27. Awesome tips here, Brian! I’m going to try your technique this week. Curious, thoughβ€” how many emails do you send at once? Do you send them BCC, or send each one individually?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Andrew! Good question: I send them one at a time so that I can personalize each one.

  28. Hi Brian. I created a post called 101+ Sources for Blog Content Ideas on my blog (Small Business Ideas Blog) and used this method and got about the same response rate. Another cool thing I noticed was a good increase in social shares.

    My question is how do you evaluate which sites to email? In other words, do you look for a high level of engagement, overall site traffic, etc? Or just email everyone? Definitely a fan of your blog, by the way.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Brian. That’s awesome that you tried it out for yourself and saw real results. For this campaign I emailed people who had already linked to similar content. In your case I’d find popular posts on the topic of finding blog ideas, reverse engineer their links using ahrefs, and then reaching out to them.

      1. Thanks Brian. I actually used Scrapebox instead. What I did was search Google for “blog ideas” and then got the backlinks from the top sites. I have some ideas for future topics that I think will do better. I’ll let you know if I have a good case study for you one day πŸ™‚

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Ahh nice. Scrapebox FTW! Thanks again for sharing the success you’ve had with the Skyscraper Technique, Brian.

  29. Mohammad Avatar Mohammadsays:

    I wish I could use this methoed,my website in arabic and thier not a great number of peopel who will shair my like … they weill copy my content without refaring to me …. i wish you can talk about better raking for new websites

    Thanks

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      This can actually be used on a new website as well, Mohammad. Also, I’m sure with the right outreach you can find people who are willing to link to your content without stealing it.

  30. Brian, this is a great a tip and I am sure it works. 11+% conversion rate sounds good enough to me.
    However it also feels like going into a pricing war where everyone lose in the end. We web marketers now have to give more and more and more for free in order to win. Isn’t there a better way? :/

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      That’s a fair point, Jerry: the freemium bar is definitely getting higher and higher all the time.

      It’s like an arms race right now. Personally, I like it when things get more challenging and resource-intensive: it raises the barrier to entry which leaves more market share for me πŸ™‚

  31. Bashoo Zmmarraii Avatar Bashoo Zmmarraiisays:

    Sweet! article mate i seriously promised myself doing extremely special article

    my first article took me 3 days to complete lol but hey it was interesting to write it
    Hooking up more with you πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad to hear the effort was worth it. Now it’s time to tell the world about your article, Bashoo πŸ™‚

  32. Hi Brian,

    Very informative article. I just started my first blog to share my personal experience as an affiliate marketer and need to build my traffic. Even if I’ve been doing online marketing since 2003, my expertise is more with PPC advertising. Therefore, I’m pretty new to blogging and social medias.

    What I really enjoyed when reading was the fact you provide precise and detailed information on how to proceed. I will follow your recipe and keep you posted on my results.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Carl. I also had trouble getting traffic when I first started out with white hat SEO and content marketing. I was a lot different than the black hat SEO stuff I was doing. And I imagine PPC is also really different. As long as you stick to proven content development and promotion strategies like this, you’ll do great.

      Definitely keep me posted on how the Skycraper Technique works for your affiliate marketing site.

  33. Mike Avatar Mikesays:

    Hi Brian,
    Great article. Very concise. I was wondering if you could share on average how long this process might take you start to finish. From the very first step of content prospecting and research to getting the response emails from the site owners? I’m sure this will vary greatly, but wondering how long I should expect to invest time-wise for a campaign similar to the one in this case study. Also, do you tend to create all the resources yourself or hire them out? I’m very interested in how to scale this for client sites…etc.

    Thanks again!
    Mike

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad you enjoyed it, Mike!

      Really good questions.

      As you said, it depends on the resources you have on hand, the content you’re producing etc. But if you have a dedicated person on the project, you could get the post conceptualized and written in a few days. And then it’s another 2-3 days of outreach after that.

      I tend to outsource the content. I do step #1 myself and then give specific instructions to a freelance writer to actually create the piece. Then I hand step #3 to a VA for the outreach.

  34. Awab Aqib Avatar Awab Aqibsays:

    That’s a fantastic piece of writing, Brian. Thank you very much. It was really helpful, especially for a newbie like me in Blogosphere. πŸ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks for reading, Awab. This is an awesome way to promote a new blog. Keep me posted on how things go for you πŸ™‚

  35. Keyur Patel Avatar Keyur Patelsays:

    Thank You Brian
    I have never get tutorial such like this. I’m going to apply this now.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      My pleasure, Keyur. Definitely give it a shot and keep me posted on your progress.

  36. Brian,

    I used topsy like you suggested for the keyword I am looking to rank for. Many of the top 10 links were broken and no longer there. No only can I get the links pointing to them to point to me, but I can also notify them of their broken links on their site, which hopefully will be appreciated by their webmaster, and get me a better conversion rate.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      GREAT find. I never thought of using Topsy for broken link building. But it’s another place to find once-popular content, so it makes perfect sense that you’d find some broken links on there. Thanks for sharing that with everyone, Ryan!

  37. This is great stuff, Brian! Really looking forward to giving this technique a shot. It’s easy to overlook, but simply striving to produce the best piece of content possible goes a long way. Looking forward to your newsletters.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Jordan! Definitely give it a shot. The payoff for providing the #1 piece of content in your industry is immense πŸ™‚

  38. hi brain,
    i am using onpage optimization perfectly , my site is new , what is the best strategy to get more traffic my website is – link building or social bookmarking ?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Definitely link building. In fact, I’d use the Skyscraper Technique to get your new site on the right track.

  39. ravi janardhan Avatar ravi janardhansays:

    Thanks Brian for an awesome post. Your ideas & The Skyscraper technique will help us a lot.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad you enjoyed the post, Ravi. Give me a heads up if you ever have any questions about The Skyscraper Technique.

  40. mshabrinakbar Avatar mshabrinakbarsays:

    Thanks for sharing brian, i hope it’s working for my site.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      My pleasure. Let me know how The Skyscraper Technique works out for you on your site.

  41. I just begin build my site and link building is so important! Thanks for your sharing, a high quality article!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad to hear that, June. This will definitely give your new site a huge boost πŸ™‚

  42. Pretty impressive. It may take time but will surely work.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Amit. You’re right: it’s worth the time and effort πŸ™‚

  43. Put this in to practice today, already see a couple links rolling in πŸ™‚ Thanks Brian!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Nice Christian. Really glad to hear that πŸ˜€

  44. Hi Brian,
    I like your article. This will help me to build quality back-links. The analysis tools are really very helpful.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Babasaheb! I aim to please.

  45. Really a good post …but is it necessary to have same content and nearby content for backlink

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Vinod.

  46. I personally think that the common mistake we perceive is that great content is enough, Well, in this aspect we have to think outside the box. We have to think of strategies we could apply to meet our goal(s). This case study speaks it all. the result is great, applying the follosing steps will surely make us on top. Like a skyscraper-we have to stand out.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      That’s very true. I think it comes from the fact that lots of so-called “SEO experts” say that you can publish great content and be OK. As we’ve both found, there’s a lot more to it than that.

  47. Wow I’ve been reading several articles on your site today and I’m blown away! So much great info and I really appreciate the detailed How To lists. It all seems simpler somehow!
    I’ve been so disappointed by the response rate of pitching bloggers that I’ve given up. You make the point though again: we need to promote amazing content, otherwise who will want regular content…
    Can’t wait to create an amazing piece of content and test your strategies. Thanks Brian!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Laure! That’s true: promoting content is an absolute must…even if it’s amazing.

  48. Fantastic post – really great strategy, thank you for posting it!
    Just a question: If its not possible to get any quality backlinks or backlinks at all to your skyscraped blog post – is it still an effective strategy? Do I need backlinks to get it successfull? Can the blog itself be effective in the SERPs?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Glad you enjoyed it, Carl. To answer your question: you definitely want to get some backlinks from your post in order for it to rank.

  49. Yisroel Reiss Avatar Yisroel Reisssays:

    This is a really, really neat stuff. Brian, I just discovered you from your article somewhere about something like 100 tips you learned from working in the industry for 5 years and I must say, you provide very USEFUL content (meaning, I walk away with new tactical, strategies from reading your work). Thank you much for taking the time to write these articles.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks for your kind words, Yisroel. I’m happy to provide useful content that people can use to grow their business πŸ™‚

  50. I am new to seo. Now days just studying some techniques to apply for my blog. I am new in Blogging and I hope so that al of your articles are going to help me. But still confused for so many things. Hopefully Everything goes cleared by reading all of your contents. I want to grow my site visitors. Guide me what I should actually do? focusing on quality stuff first or building links?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Definitely publish quality stuff first, Umer.

      1. Keep on focusing on building quality stuff first. πŸ™‚ Thanks Brian.

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          That’s a good way to approach SEO, Umer. Without quality stuff, building links is almost impossible.

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