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 focused on provid­ing increas­ingly high­er-qual­ity inform­a­tion to con­tent divers (as opposed to con­tent surfers).

In the example, five lay­ers of ever­green con­tent are stacked ver­tic­ally on a quarterly timeline:

Example of a five-lay­er deep con­tent structure:

This inbound logic is sim­il­ar to ice­berg pub­lish­ing and con­tent themes regard­ing struc­ture and depth.

Learn more: The Deep Content PR Strategy

Skyscraper Technique 2: Content Themes

Content Themes

It is good prac­tice to struc­ture the con­tent cal­en­dar around con­tent themes (typ­ic­ally four per year, one per quarter) show­cas­ing vary­ing aspects of the organ­isa­tion’s core message.

Using con­tent themes comes with sev­er­al upsides:

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

Content Themes Example

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.

Learn more: The Content Themes PR Strategy

Skyscraper Technique 3: Evergreen Content

Evergreen Content

What’s ever­green con­tent?

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

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 make a more sig­ni­fic­ant short-term splash, ever­green con­tent accu­mu­lates online impact over time—which requires patience.

Now, forever is a long time. I typ­ic­ally apply these arbit­rary rules to determ­ine what con­sti­tutes ever­green content:

Learn more: The Evergreen Content PR Strategy

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PR Resource: Inbound vs Outbound

The Inbound Shift

As pub­lic rela­tions pro­fes­sion­als, we must rethink how we think about pub­lics. Traditionally, many PR depart­ments have argued:

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

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

The inbound shift is a fun­da­ment­al mind­set change in the pub­lic rela­tions industry.

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/

Inbound vs Outbound: The Difference

Inbound vs out­bound is the online equi­val­ent of draw­ing the line between those who know you and those who don’t.

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

If your inbound shift PR strategy is strong, you might no longer need to pri­or­it­ise your out­bound PR strategies since your inbound audi­ence will attract out­bound publics!

Learn more: The Inbound Shift PR Strategy