Finding it increasingly difficult to capture the attention of your target audience? Can’t seem to actually deliver on their expectations? In today’s marketing landscape, the competition is heating up. 

As a result, marketers are getting more creative, experimenting with new content mediums, and varying their approaches to bringing in targeted new customers. From listicles to infographics to video content, those who are taking action to find out which type of content resonates best with their audience are coming out on top. 

What can you do to stay in the game? Try the Skyscraper Technique. 

Designed to help you create content that actually drives traffic, this method has helped me earn over 70,000 page views from just one post. To help you get started, I’ll walk you through the technique below, show you how I’ve used it, and provide a helpful checklist to ensure you don’t miss a beat. 

What’s the Skyscraper Technique? (And Why Does It Work)

Created by Backlinko’s Brian Dean, the Skyscraper Technique is a system for turning content into high quality backlinks. 

Here’s how it works: You start by researching popular trends, topics, and already well-received pieces of existing content across the topic areas your business typically covers. Then, you look for new and unique ways to create content that communicates a similar message — with a twist. This might mean that you leverage a new, more engaging medium, update the statistics, or employ a better design. 

Once you’ve created a new and improved piece of content, reach out to the folks that have already linked out to similar content to put your piece on their radar … and hopefully earn a link. 

This technique works really well for a few reasons:

• There’s already demand. By discovering existing successful content, I’ve already established that there’s proven demand in the marketplace for content around the topic I’m considering addressing. From here it’s important to examine why that individual piece of content was so successful. Did it solve a problem for the readers? Was it particularly entertaining? 
• You’re dealing with a primed audience. If you can create something even better than the original resource you come across, you’ll have the potential to really excite the existing audience for that piece. If the topic you select is timely, I recommend simultaneously building out a target list of brands, publications, and influencers who either shared the previous piece or linked to it so you can reach out right away. 
• There’s serious ranking potential. Google has likely already indexed the existing resource well. In creating something that’s even better, you have the potential to topple that older piece of content, outrank them, and drive in more traffic — especially if you win those high quality backlinks by reaching out. 

How I Used the Skyscraper Technique to Drive 70K+ Page Views

Earlier this year, I saw Fast Company post an article about a new freelance hourly rate calculator that was making its way through the freelancing community. In just a matter of weeks, it had been written about or mentioned by almost every online publication, brand, and influencer that weighs in on freelancing-related topics.

The Fast Company article already had thousands of shares and was the clear winner in terms of search rankings. Because this specific niche topic aligned well with much of the business content we produce over at CreativeLive, this was a great opportunity to piggyback off of the proven demand and clear success of that existing piece of content.

I hypothesized that presenting the same solution to freelancers — helping them calculate the hourly rate they should charge for their services — in a more visually appealing manner, could be a big hit. 

To take advantage of this, I worked with our design team to develop a high quality infographic on calculating your freelance hourly rate and strategically built many distribution opportunities into the design of the infographic. I made sure to mention several notable online tools and services that are useful for freelancers, with the intention of asking them to share once the infographic went live.

We also quickly put together an ebook on the essentials steps to launching a freelance career. This was done the week before the infographic was published so that we could tie a topically relevant call-to-action to the bottom of the post and capture more leads for our freelance-related classes.

After publishing, the infographic was an instant success with our existing audience. From there, I used BuzzSumo to identify all of the other brands and blogs that publish and share content related to ‘freelance hourly rates’ and reached out to each of them, asking if they’d be up for sharing or republishing a uniquely written post featuring our infographic.

The result? This post has been shared over 8,200 times and we’ve now outranked the Fast Company article for our key search term of ‘freelance hourly rate.’

We’ve driven a total of 72,000+ page views and 3,648 new email subscribers from this post since it was published, not to mention the dozens of valuable backlinks and re-published versions of our infographic that continue to go up on freelance-related sites around the web.

6-Step Checklist for Using the Skyscraper Technique

Ready to try the technique out? Here’s a quick checklist to guide your execution. 

1) Research and uncover opportunities.

Set up Google Alerts for keywords related to topics you want to cover, use BuzzSumo to research the pieces of content that have been most-shared around specific keyword phrases, and analyze opportunities based on search volume with HubSpot’s Keyword App or Google’s Keyword Planner.

2) Build a list of potential distribution partners.

Start with who you know. Are there any brands, blogs, or influencers you know that would genuinely find this piece of content interesting? From there, jump back into BuzzSumo add the other websites and people that have published or shared content like yours. Chances are, they have an audience that would love to hear about your great new piece of content.

3) Create better content.

If you stumble upon a blog post from a competitor on a topic that you’d love to cover, perhaps you could make an infographic, video, or even a more in-depth guide that could deliver more value. Consider which content medium your audience engages with most, and start by relying on the skills your organization is best at.

4) Promote to your audience.

Getting that initial buzz going with your own audience is essential to showing social proof before reaching out to other brands and influencers. Share on all of your social channels, with your email list, and internally with your employees. 

5) Reach out to the right people.

Now that you have some momentum picking up with your great new piece of content, it’s time to spread out and start sharing with your list of targeted influencers, brands, and bloggers who publish and share related content. In your reach out message, be sure to show genuine interest in them, make your ask very clear, and provide them with sample copy they’ll be able to copy/paste.

6) Stay current.

Over time, the usefulness of your amazing piece of content will decline. Others will publish new content on the topic, the industry will change, and new alternatives will arise. Updating your content so that it stays relevant to your audience is crucial to maintaining the value you worked so hard to create.

Have you tried the Skyscraper Technique? Share your experiences in the comments section below.

A big piece of the inbound marketing puzzle is SEO and content. At the center of those pieces are keywords. But when I – as an Inbound Marketing – am putting together campaigns, strategies, and content calendars, I’m often asked, How can you tell people are using or searching for certain keywords?

There’s a plethora of blogs on SEO and keywords out there – but not much on this specific topic, hence this blog. And because I’m a “the more details the better” kind of girl – I’m going to take a few steps back and start at the beginning, so you’re equipped with as much knowledge as possible. 

So, What is a Keyword?

Technically speaking, a keyword is “an informative word used in an information retrieval system to indicate content of a document.” Thanks, Google. Now, in English; a keyword – in HubSpot’s words – is most often, “a word or phrase that is a topic of significance.” 

Seems pretty simple, right? It is – although you should know there are four different kinds of keywords:

1. Broad Keywords are shorter words – most often one word on its own. Although these keywords are easily applied to your industry or company, they are likely easily applied to many companies within your industry.
2. Fat Head Keywords are similar to broad keywords but are usually made up of two or three general, broad keyword.
3. Chunky Middle Keywords are where those keywords that are most competitive and least competitive cross over. Jabez LeBret describes them as the “keywords and phrases that real potential customers are typing into search engines everyday.”
4. Long-Tail Keywords are typically longer phrases or a series of words that are a bit more specific to who you are – both your company and within your industry.

Here’s a few examples:

Ok, What is the Importance of Keywords?

Keywords are important because they’re the key (see what I did there?) to gaining insight into your potential customers’ – or your ideal buyer personas’ – questions, pain points, or interests. As searchers, your target audience use keywords when they verbalize topics in the form of online searches as they seek more information.

HubSpot, narrows down the answer to Why do I Need Keywords? to three simple reasons…

1) Keywords = Content Foundation

Each page of content (or blog, or offer, or email) has a main topic, and that topic generally ties back to a keyword or keyword phrase. Keywords help establish the foundation of your content and give your visitors an understanding of the page.

2) Keywords Give Purpose & Understanding

When reading information they find, visitors are quick to scan content for keywords or phrases they originally searched for. Keywords = gold, in this case.

3) Keywords Help Search Engines

As search engines crawl your site, they index pages based on the keywords they find to help determine the purpose of the content.

As Wendy Boswell puts it, “Whether you’re looking for just the right keywords to target in an article or site content, gauging what popular keyword searches are at any given moment, or getting a good idea of what future keyword searches might be, keyword search tools can help you accomplish all these goals and more.”

Five Ways to Figure out What Keywords People are Using

When it comes to figuring out what keywords potential buyers, clients, and customers are using, there’s a whole lot of due diligence to be done, and it’s something I take very seriously. Lucky for you, I’m here to loan you a few keyword research secret weapons so you can DIY, if need be. Below are a few tried and true ways to gain some insight into what keywords people are using.

1) Use Your People

Yes, your people. Who qualifies as “your people?” Your customers, potential buyers, staff, etc. Anyone who is familiar with your business, uses your product, purchases your goods… even those who choose a competitor – those are your people. So, do some homework – what questions are they asking? What are ‘hot topics’ or trends?

These notes will be big players in your keyword game. When you’re doing this, be sure to remove yourselves from the process and put yourselves in your persona’s shoes – use the words and terms they use, ask questions in the way they ask them, etc. Oftentimes, the keywords a business thinks they should rank for or talk about are not the terms their customers are actually using.

2) Get Social

Don’t overlook your social media channels – especially when it comes to trying to figure out what your people are talking about, asking, or complaining about. Advancements and updates to social channels have brought with them a look into trending topics and more, including:

Facebook: Facebook has made a whole lot of updates to their graph search tool, which allows you to search pretty much anything your connections might be talking about. Take a few minutes to learn more about Facebook Graph Search and how to best use it. They also have a Trending toolbar on the right side of their newsfeed that show popular topics, and the option to narrow into Politics, Science & Technology, Sports, and Entertainment.

Twitter: Twitter actually has two different ways to get an inside look at what people are talking about. And the good news is, you don’t actually have to tweet yourself to see them (although you will need to follow others from an account.) On the left sidebar of Twitter’s homepage, you can see trending topics; these can be tailored based on location and interest. You can also use Twitter’s search functionality for trending topics, keywords, and hashtags.

Google+: When you login to your Google+ account, you can head to the Trending page – similar to Facebook and Twitter – to see who is talking about what on Google+.

YouTube: Like its social media platform friends, YouTube also has a Trends Dashboard – right here – that will show what the most popular videos and topics are. You can narrow in on these trends by selecting a city, state, or country, an age group, and gender. According to YouTube, “Trending Topics are algorithmically-generated topics from keywords in the title, tags, and description of the video within sets of videos that are currently rising in popularity. Trending videos are based on embedded video views and views on YouTube.” 

3) HubSpot Keyword Grader

HubSpot’s Keyword Grader allows users to get real time information and statistics on keywords that are most relevant to their business and industry. You can compare keywords, search volume, rank, and more – all in one place – and, in a way that integrates with the rest of your content.

4) Google Tools

It probably comes as no surprise that Google has a whole suite of tools to help you get to the bottom of the keywords and phrases. And in this case, they have a few golden tickets to keyword insight…

Google Trends: This tool is one of my favorites – it fascinates me. This allows you to get an inside look at Google’s databases of searches. You can look at Google searches by regions, categories, languages, and set the time and search properties (image, etc.). You can look at one single keyword, or compare multiple terms.

Google Autocomplete: You know when you go to search for something, and Google starts to finish your question or thought? That’s autocomplete. Google explains, “Autocomplete predictions are possible search terms … The search queries that you see as part of Autocomplete reflect what other people are searching for and the content of web pages.” Pretty cool.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner: The great thing about the AdWords planner is that you don’t need to actually spend any money on AdWords – you just need a Google account. With an account, users can access the Keyword Planner and enter a keyword and Google will populate search volume (how often it is used) and the competition of that word (how many people or businesses want to rank for that word). Because Google is great, this tool lets you filter by language, location, and mobile or desktop use. My fellow expert, Travis, dives into how AdWords works and the many benefits 
here.

5) Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a tool that gives insight as to whether or not a keyword or particular keyword phrase is worth content efforts. This tool gives users an estimate of how many times a keyword or keyword phrase is searched each day, plus any related phrases or keywords. Wordtracker does require a membership, but you can try it a few times for free.

Even the biggest questions can be answered with some time and tools. And despite what you might think about SEO, nothing is impossible – not even keywords. But especially not keywords, when it comes to using your resources and being savvy. Although you’ll have to jump in and use a little elbow grease, there’s a lot of knowledge out there to harness … happy keywording!

Have additional questions about keywords, content, or SEO? Comment below and let me know – I’d love to help answer them!

As a marketer, you work hard every day to generate, qualify, and deliver leads to your sales team. You can’t afford to let your leads flounder after you hand them off.

Unfortunately, thanks to today’s hypercompetitive sales landscape, prospects are inundated with more information and content than ever. In other words, your dry, jargon-filled deck isn’t going to cut it anymore. 

That’s why we’ve partnered with Prezi to bring you this free guide on creating sales presentations. It’ll walk you through how to build a dynamic sales presentation, provide tips and best practices, and introduce suggested layouts.

Here are a few things you’ll learn:

• How to create an intro that commands attention 
• Why social proof is so important
• How to make your ideal price point stand out
• The best approach to competitive analysis, and how to use it to your advantage
• How to seal the deal with a call-to-action
• And even more about how to create a persuasive sales deck

Ready to start turning prospects into customers? Click here to download the free guide.

Every time you surf the web, there’s a whole world of technical stuff going on behind the scenes. Developers and engineers are usually the ones living and operating in that world, while some marketers — especially those who aren’t super confident in their technical expertise — tend to shy away from it.

But marketers need to have, at minimum, a general understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes of their website.

Why? For one, metrics marketers tend to be responsible for can depend heavily on the back-end development of a website. For example, the number of HTTP requests your webpage requires affects page load time, which ultimately influences user experience, bounce rate, and other key metrics. 

What is an HTTP request? How does it affect user experience? And what can a marketer do to reduce their website’s HTTP requests? Let’s go through each of these questions one by one. By the end, you’ll have a better grasp on why these response protocols matter, and what you can do to give your website visitors a better experience.

To see how strong your website is, check out our Website Grader tool for a detailed report of your website’s overall performance. 

What is an HTTP Request?

Each time someone visits a webpage, here’s what typically happens: That person’s web browser (Chrome, Firefox, etc.) pings the web server that hosts the webpage they’re trying to visit — in this case, a webpage on your website. It requests that the server send it the files containing the content for that site. These files contain any text, images, and multimedia that exist on that webpage.

That request is called an HTTP request. HTTP stands for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol,” which is just a fancy name for a web browser sending a request for a file, and the server sending (or “transferring”) that file to the browser.

Once your server receives an HTTP request from a user’s browser, your server then responds and delivers the files to that user’s browser. The user’s browser then renders the webpage.

Here’s the thing: The browser needs to make a separate HTTP request for every single file on your website. If your website doesn’t have many files, then it won’t take very long to request and download the content on your site. But most good websites do have a lot of files. Large, high definition images are usually the culprit.

How HTTP Requests Affect User Experience

In a nutshell, the more files on your website, the more HTTP requests your user’s browser will need to make. The more HTTP requests, the longer your site takes to load. And larger files will take even longer to transfer.

A long load time can be a disruptive and frustrating experience for your users. Mobile users will have a particularly bad experience, as most of them will have to wait until every asset on a webpage is downloaded before the page will even begin to appear in their mobile browser.

And research shows load time matters when it comes to website performance. According to KISSmetrics, 47% of consumers expect a webpage to load in two seconds or less, and 40% abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load.

So, what’s the magic number of HTTP requests a website should aim for? The answer is not “one.” Some people think they can solve the problem by only using one JavaScript file to control their entire website. But remember: File size affects load time, too. For complex websites, that one file will be insanely long.

While there isn’t necessarily an optimal number of files your webpage should be reduced to, HubSpot’s principal product marketing manager Jeffrey Vocell suggests aiming for between 10–30 files. For most top-performing websites, getting there is difficult and generally requires dedicated engineering resources. Steve Souders, an internet performance expert formerly at Yahoo! and Google, tweeted last year that the average number of page requests is actually 99+ per page.

How to Reduce Your Website’s HTTP Requests

1) Check how many HTTP requests your site currently makes.

Google Chrome’s Network panel makes it easy for anyone to check how many HTTP requests a site makes. It’s a really cool way of seeing what’s on your page and what’s taking a long time to load.

Basically, it shows you all the files that a browser had to request and transfer in order to download the page — and it also shows a timeline of when this happened. For example, the API can tell you precisely when the HTTP request for an image started, and when the image’s final byte was received. It’s a really cool way of seeing what’s on your page and what’s taking a long time to load.

To see the Network panel for a given webpage, open the webpage in Google Chrome. In the main Chrome menu at the top of your screen, go to View > Developer > Developer Tools. 

The Network panel will open in your browser. Since it records all network activity while DevTools is open, the panel may be empty when you first open it. Reload the page to start recording, or just wait for network activity to occur in your application.

Here’s an overview of what everything in the Network panel means:

Image Credit: Google

Curious how many requests your website requires? The Network panel will tell you that, too. Take a look at the very bottom left of the screenshot above and you’ll see the total number of requests; in this case, 25 requests.

To learn how to read the panel and evaluate your network performance in more detail, read through this Google Chrome resource.

2) Remove unnecessary images.

At this point, you should have an idea of which files are taking longest to load, including image files. The easiest way to reduce the number of requested files? Eliminate unnecessary images.

Images are a valuable webpage asset because they make for a strong visual experience on your webpages. However, if you have images on your page that aren’t contributing much value, it’s best to just cut them out altogether — especially the ones that are really large.

3) Reduce the file size for remaining images.

For the images you do keep, use high-quality photos that have a compressed file size. This will help reduce the time it takes to make a HTTP request, thereby reducing load time.

If you’re a HubSpot user, you don’t have to worry about compressing images — the HubSpot COS will automatically resize and compress your images. Otherwise, use a tool like TinyPNG or Compressor.io to reduce file size.

4) Evaluate other parts of your page that are contributing to page load time.

Cutting and compressing images are a great first step to reducing HTTP requests and page load time. But what else did you see on the Network panel that’s adding requests? For example, you might find that a video or Twitter integration adds an entire second or two to your load time. That’s good to know. From there, you and your team can decide whether those assets are worth keeping.

5) Make JavaScript asynchronous.

If you have JavaScript on your page that’s not asynchronous then you’ll want to take it to your developer to make it asynchronous — or remove it from the webpage altogether, if possible.

Why? It all comes down to user experience. When a person’s browser loads a webpage, it loads the page’s assets from top to bottom. When it hits a JavaScript file and wants to load it, if that JavaScript is not asynchronous, then the browser will stop loading everything else on the page until it loads that JavaScript file in its entirely.

If that JavaScript is asynchronous, then the browser will load it at the same time as it continues loading other elements on the page. Asynchronous JavaScript files make for a better user experience.

To learn more about making JavaScript code asynchronous, I recommend checking out this presentation by Steve Souders and this blog post by Visual Website Optimizer.

6) Combine CSS files together.

Every CSS file you use for your website adds to the number of HTTP requests your website requires, thereby adding time to your page load speed. While this is sometimes unavoidable, in most cases, you can actually combine two or more CSS files together. (You may have to get help from a developer for this.)

Why? Because CSS code can be anywhere on your site or in any number of files, and it’ll still works just as well. In fact, often the only reason a site has multiple CSS files in the first place is because the site’s designer found it easier to work with separate files. (To learn about combining CSS files in more detail, take a look at this front-end website performance guide.)

If you want a more detailed report of your website’s overall performance, check out HubSpot’s newly redesigned Website Grader. You’ll receive a free, personalized report that grades your site on key metrics including performance, mobile readiness, SEO, and security.