Content diversification is a better alternative to the “skyscraper” content creation strategy. Other than long-form articles, explore the use of videos, podcasts, and infographics in your website and tease your content with social media posts, too. This way, you can improve your search engine rankings, drive more traffic to your website, and grow your audience in the process. When you post a variety of content formats, you are addressing your message to people from different stages of the marketing funnel--not only the bottom or those who are ready to transact with you. Likewise, multiple formats give you the chance to rank for various queries while giving readers options to understand better the information you present. Therefore, you are strengthening a page based on search and user experience.
The main issue with the skyscraper technique in this new SERP and SEO landscape is while you create these large in-depth pieces of content you fail to dive into the specific areas of the customer's problem or question. A strong alternative is to identify gaps in the content as they relate to granular bits of information and create a piece of content, tool, media that really focuses on that one area. Google rewards direct answers to questions and there is often a lot of search volume in all the different variations of more specific queries
The pillar pages strategy, popularized by HubSpot, aims to create content that ranks for searches about certain topics. The first stage is to create a single pillar page about the topic as a whole that is extremely comprehensive. The next stage is to complement the pillar page with a cluster of supplementary posts that examine very specific aspects of that topic by answering questions or interviewing experts. All the supplementary posts link back to the pillar page which is a powerful way of improving the page’s SEO using internal linking. A site can have many pillar pages to ensure it ranks for a range of different topics.
One of the weaknesses of the skyscraper strategy is that it rests on the assumption that re-creating a better version of the content that's been widely shared and successful will always work. It might work, of course, but sometimes a topic becomes overly saturated with coverage and, even if you're able to build better content, the contacts in question who have shared it will obviously find it somehow repetitive to be pitched the same content. A simple alternative is to rely on contact database sellers such as Prowly, Anewstip, Muck Rack, Cision, and so on. There's usually enough variety in those contacts to make your content look fresh every time you share it out
Crowdsourcing is one alternative to the skyscraper content creation strategy that can have serious rewards when included in a content strategy. Rather than trying to one-up an existing piece of content as the skyscraper technique demands, crowdsourcing draws on the unique minds of your community to create fresh content. Crowdsourcing can help increase the quality of your work by virtue of opening you up to new ideas, points-of-view, and innovations, lending an authenticity to your content that's crucial for strong engagement. Plus, you can scale your content creation much quicker by reaching out to experts for their quotes and input rather than writing an entire article on your own.
Cornerstone content takes its name from the construction of buildings. In the old days, when you wanted to lay the foundation to a building, you would place a stone at the corner and build the rest around it. This stone, the “cornerstone," was the most important stone of the building as it effectively held up the entire structure. When applied to content strategy this entails creating foundational pieces of content that explain the core concepts that every customer needs to understand to do business with you. Cornerstone content is different to skyscraper content because it’s not about the length of your content, it’s about the educational value it offers.
The Skyscraper technique requires that you take an already existing piece of content and add to it to make it better and longer. One alternative is to create the content the internet has yet to see. This may sound impossible, but it's surprisingly within reach using Google Question Hub. Visit the platform and enter a keyword to see a list of unanswered questions, or questions people have searched but haven't been able to find satisfactory answers to. Cross reference some of the questions with keyword research from Ahrefs or SEMrush, and create supporting content that answers what you've found. Why piggyback off of the same content that's been rehashed a dozen times when you can create something original?
Use content gap analysis instead of the Skyscraper Technique. Both strategies have the same goal yet they utilize different strategies. When you choose content gap analysis, you create missing content topics rather than just improving existing ones. This is the perfect opportunity to not only show you’re an authority but also an innovator. You take advantage of the first-mover advantage with content gap analysis. It’s a great way to increase brand awareness.
One alternative to the Skyscraper technique is to check out the backlink profiles of your competitors and see if there are any backlinks to pages that return a 404 error code. Find the email of the web owner using Hunter.io and ask them to change the link to the alternative resource that exists on your website.
While capitalizing off of someone else's top ranking page is a savvy strategy, creating original content is better for brand transparency. However, you do need to know how your content stacks up against the competition. By performing competitive content analysis, you can examine your competitors' content quality, how often they post, and how their content is performing. This will help you better understand the kind of content that engages well in your market. To conduct a competitive content audit, you'll need to research how your direct competitors use articles, guest posts, images, videos, case studies, and surveys. You'll also want to note whether their content aligns with their product or service or if it's a mission-based marketing approach. You can do this by combing through their websites and social media channels or using an analytics tool like Google Analytics or BuzzSumo. With this information at your fingertips, you'll create authentic and unique content of real value.
One alternative to the "skyscraper" content creation strategy is the "content curation" content creation strategy. With this strategy, you do not create your own content, but instead curate content from other sources. This can be a great way to build up your content library quickly and easily.
Creating content that acts as a link magnet can be one of the best ways to boost your site's traffic. Some of the top types of link-worthy content are - interesting statistics, research, surveys and infographics related to your industry. Content writers and journalists are always on a hunt for valuable content. And it becomes super easy for them to link back to you if your content provides additional value to their article.
Once I have watched the webinar, where Tim Suolo from Ahrefs was sharing some content creation strategies. Tim introduced the splintering technique, which quickly became my favorite one. The idea is straightforward - when you find a fantastic blog article, instead of using the skyscrapers technique, you can splinter text according to table of contents or subheadings and then write deeper blog articles on each subject. It’s effective and definitely less time-consuming than the skyscrapers technique.
While capitalizing off of someone else's top ranking page is a savvy strategy, creating original content is better for brand transparency. However, you do need to know how your content stacks up against the competition. By performing competitive content analysis, you can examine your competitors' content quality, how often they post, and how their content is performing. This will help you understand the kind of content that gets better audience engagement. To conduct a competitive content audit, you'll need to research how your direct competitors use articles, guest posts, images, videos, case studies, and surveys. You'll also want to note whether their content aligns with their product or service or if it's a mission-based marketing approach. You can do this by combing through their websites and social media channels or using an analytics tool like Google Analytics or BuzzSumo. With this information at your fingertips, you'll create authentic and unique content of real value.
If we can assume that the point of skyscraper content is to attract links, an alternative is to run paid ads to a piece of content to ensure it shows up at the top of Google. Not only can this be cheap depending on the topic, but if you have a piece of content that people want to link to (like a statistics post) then it's an easy way to ensure your website has the most visibility.
Founder at Hearhere
Answered 4 years ago
One of the myths of content creation strategies, including Skyscraper, is that they take completely different paths to obtain the ultimate goal of bettering SEO, yet, in reality, many build on each other and this is the tact of the Pillar Content Strategy. Skyscraper content creation focuses on building backlinks through short references, whereas the Pillar method builds on this method by focusing on creating authority through long form techniques. Through comprehensive content rich website pages that add to short opinions, clustering supplementary pages along with references, and focusing your ranking efforts through searches for a specific subject that build on name recognition, the Pillar Content Strategy improves upon older methodology. By using the Pillar method you will build SEO through a display of expertise beyond the short mentions utilized in the Skyscraper technique.
If one is creative, the "skyscraper" content strategy can be a useful technique for obtaining awesome backlinks, but because new content is being built upon a foundation of older content, it's possible to have a broken backlink. For that reason, this shouldn't be the only content tool in the arsenal. A good coordinating strategy for "skyscraper" content is the "pillar" technique, in which there's a fair amount of upfront investment into making a valuable article with high keyword density. Then subordinating content that links back to the main article can be created and either sent to email subscribers or crafted into a cold email template.
Skyscraper content creation means building on top of what someone else already made. Another strategy is to see the gaps in the market, i.e. what *hasn't* been made. For example, when you look up "B2B statistics" you see a bunch of skyscraper articles with titles like "B2B marketing statistics" or "B2B e-commerce statistics". This is well and good... But nobody actually made a comprehensive list of B2B stats and built links to it so far. This means that if you make a superpost about B2B stats - covering logistics, digital trends, etc - you could blow everyone else out of the water!
Content Hubs are a great alternative to Skyscraper techniques. Instead of creating long-form content, you can make a pillar page. For instance, if you are writing a blog on Link Building which will be your pillar page, then the hubs to interlink this page would be Broken Link Building, Guest Posting, Help a reporter out, Brand mentions, which then will link these posts from your pillar page to the other pillar page. How is this strategy helpful? When you interlink all the hubs with the pillar page, chances are if any of your hubs rank, that will also help rank the other hubs, or more importantly, it will rank the pillar page, which is beneficial and less time consuming than the Skyscraper technique. Answer Provided by 'SEO Proactive' Website: https://www.seoproactive.com/
One way to cover every aspect of a topic in detail is with a hub that organizes all your content on that specific topic, in one place. This may still involve a skyscraper article as a pillar post that's central to the hub, but around this you can create supporting articles that cover the 'How, Why, Where, What, When, Who, and Which' aspects of the topic, one by one. Organizing your content in this way can make it easier for readers to discover answers to specific questions they have. Instead of having to scan a 5,000 word article, they can find a page dedicated to answering that question in more detail. It's also a good signal to search engines when you have enough authority on the topic to write about it in this much detail. So, you could find that this approach benefits your SEO strategy as well.