Content Skyscrapers: A Core Tactic for Inbound and SEO

We should all be build­ing Content Skyscrapers.

I love this simple yet power­ful inbound tactic.

Brian Dean of Backlinko came up with the Skyscraper Technique for con­tent mar­ket­ing. It’s as power­ful as it’s elegant.

Build con­tent sky­scrapers to poach social engage­ment and search volumes:

It’s as if someone built the tallest sky­scraper, and you decide to make a more elev­ated one next to them. You should get the most out of the search volumes by doing so.

Building a Content Skyscraper gives you a good idea of what it takes to suc­ceed with con­tent mar­ket­ing in your chosen niche.

To build Content Skyscrapers (or Clusters of Content Skyscrapers), prac­tice these techniques:

Skyscraper Technique 1: Deep Content

Deep Content

Deep con­tent is centred around provid­ing increas­ingly high­er qual­ity to engaged users.

In the example below, five lay­ers of ever­green con­tent are stacked:

The basic struc­ture is derived from vari­ous levels of con­tent qual­ity. This doesn’t mean that your brand gets a free pass for pub­lish­ing low-qual­ity art­icles; it means that your art­icles must meet the require­ments of the social object cloud. 

From there, the con­tent qual­ity must increase as users dive deep­er into your con­tent package.

Example of a deep con­tent structure:

Ideally, the user­’s engage­ment should determ­ine when the inform­a­tion need has been ful­filled, not the lim­it­a­tions of the web­site’s avail­able content.

As for the import­ance of struc­ture and depth, the logic is the same as that of ice­berg pub­lish­ing and con­tent themes.

Learn more: The Deep Content PR Strategy

Skyscraper Technique 2: Content Themes

How To Create Content Themes

Let’s use a fic­ti­tious example of an IT company. 

First, the IT com­pany decide on a core mes­sage for their con­tent strategy:

Core mes­sage: We make IT easy to understand.

Then, the IT com­pany breaks their core mes­sage down into four busi­ness-crit­ic­al con­tent themes:

Q1 con­tent theme: We make people under­stand the Internet of Things (IoT).

Q2 con­tent theme: We make people under­stand busi­ness auto­ma­tion.

Q3 con­tent theme: We make people under­stand cloud com­put­ing.

Q4 con­tent theme: We make people under­stand man­aged services.

For easy plan­ning and boost­ing SEO with con­tent sky­scrapers, you can cre­ate con­tent pack­ages for each theme.

Using con­tent themes comes with sev­er­al upsides:

Learn more: The Content Themes PR Strategy

Skyscraper Technique 3: Evergreen Content

Evergreen Content

What’s ever­green con­tent? For a piece of con­tent to be ever­green, it must sus­tain its value over time. This means the con­tent must be rel­ev­ant today, tomor­row, and the fore­see­able future.

While news con­tent might have a more sig­ni­fic­ant short-term impact, ever­green con­tent accu­mu­lates over time.

There are dif­fer­ent ways to lever­age ever­green con­tent. I recom­mend a few axioms for Evergreen Content:

Evergreen con­tent is an inbound approach to build­ing core mes­sages, con­tent themes, con­tent pack­ages, deep con­tent, and con­tent sky­scrapers.

Learn more: The Evergreen Content PR Strategy: Forever Is a Long Time

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PR Resource: Inbound vs Outbound

The Inbound Shift

The inbound mind­set is a fun­da­ment­al shift in the PR- and mar­ket­ing industry.

Historically, many PR- and mar­ket­ing depart­ments have argued:

“Why should we waste budgets on ‘already acquired’ audiences?”

The truth is — it’s the oth­er way around.

Instead of “spam­ming” non-exist­ing audi­ences, pub­lic rela­tions and mar­ket­ing can do much more with exist­ing online pub­lics. ¹Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​p​u​b​l​i​c​s​-​i​n​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​ns/

As PR and mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als, we must rethink how we approach audi­ences. They will be the ones doing most of the approaching.

Drawing a line between those who know you and those who don’t know you is noth­ing new:

This inbound shift is the online equi­val­ent of draw­ing the line between those who know you and those who don’t know you.

Inbound vs Outbound Communications

If your inbound shift PR strategy is good, you might not need to pri­or­it­ise out­bound PR strategies — because your inbound audi­ence will attract out­bound publics.

Learn more: The Inbound Shift PR Strategy