It’s no secret that publishing great content helps with SEO…but it’s not enough. You also need off page SEO.
Remember: Google and other search engines pay very close attention to ranking factors that take place away from your site, especially the number and quality of your backlinks.
But with updates like Penguin making most link building strategies obsolete (or even dangerous), how can you possibly build links to your site?
The answer: The Skyscraper Technique. It’s a simple, 3-step off page SEO strategy that I’ve successfully used in a dozen different industries.
Here’s how it works. First, you find content in your industry that’s already performed well. You can look at the number of comments, social shares and links. While social shares and comments are important, we’re focused on links. Believe it or not, but some content generates a ton of Tweets and Facebook Likes and few links. You want to zero-in on content that’s acquired white hat links.
Next, it’s time to make the content you found even better. Ideally you want to create something that blows the existing content out of the water. You can improve the design, depth…or just make something more up to date. Just make sure that if you showed your content to 100 people, 95+ would agree that yours is better than the base content from step #1.
The third step of The Skyscraper Technique is link building. This is where you reach out to the people linking to the base content you found in Step #1. Tell them that you also loved the content they’ve already linked to and it’s inspired you to create something even better: Your Skyscraper Content.
That’s all there is to it. If you incorporate this strategy into your off page SEO campaigns you’ll notice a steady uptick of backlinks, social signals and traffic.
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