Shotgun Skyscraper Blueprint Review: Real White Hat Linking?

In order to rank though, you're going to need quality links pointing to your site. Google likes to see that you have lots of "friends" vouching for you so to speak.

Don't listen to anyone or believe any course you may have taken in the past that tells you "content is king" because that is complete rubbish. Sure, it helps, but it's not "king."

What is the Shotgun Skyscraper?

The guys from Authority Hacker, Gael Breton and Mark Webster have come up with a course that will help you get a ton of links with minimal amount of effort. Although the "skyscraper method" terminology is not new, they have a unique approach and incorporate a "shotgun" method, meaning you're going to blast out a ton of emails using software with a minimal amount of effort to get links.

The other method takes much longer and takes up a whole lot more resources. Here, you'll be able to reduce outreach efforts drastically giving you more time to do what's important. Also, you'll most likely get these links for free.

If you have read my review on The Authority Site System, you'll see that I am a big fan of these guys and their work. They put out quality courses with strategies that I use myself. If you were to pick up both courses, you'd be WAY ahead of most people that want to start a blog or website in a specific niche.

Shotgun Skyscraper is only open for a Limited Time

This is not an evergreen course, meaning it only opens up a few times a year. 

Update on Shotgun Skyscraper

Update - You can only get Shotgun Skyscraper with a subscription to Authority Hacker Pro. It doesn't appear to be offered as a standalone course anymore. I wrote this review back in the day when it was offered separately. So if you do want to learn this white hat linking method, you'll need to purchase Authority Hacker Pro.

Keep in mind that the course only opens up a few times a year and it's only available for a week or two. If you want to be notified when it does open, just send me an email or Facebook message. I get advanced notification from them when they are about to open so I can notify you.

I Have the Course so Let's Review it!

Fortunately I was able to get my hands on it before the official launch and right off the bat i'll tell you it's a beast. Like their last course, its got a ton of information so there's a lot to take in. However, their training is excellent with videos and also a text summary (with images) to sum up each video. This is great for referring back to a lesson which I had to do often and so will you should you decide to grab it.

Before I jump into the modules let me go into more details of how this strategy works. It all starts with a linkable blogpost on your site called a Skyscraper blogpost. This is what you will create and there is training on exactly how to do this. 

The purpose of this blogpost is not to rank it, but to acquire links. Once that blogpost is created, you will reach out to others that have related content, asking for a link.

The key to the "shotgun" method is that you will be sending a LOT of emails with very little time customizing them. Most of the work will be done through automation and tools. A certain percentage of these will link back to you, albeit with some possible negotiation.

This method then gets scaled easily. Mark & Gael recieved 4000 links on one site alone using just this method. That's a lot of links!

So with the traditional "Sniper Skyscraper Method" you will be spending a long time on each prospect. As a result, you will have a higher conversion rate. You will though receive a much lower total of links. This method can only be scaled a little.

In contrast, in the "Shotgun Skyscraper Method", you're spending almost zero amount of time for each prospect, the conversion rate will be lower but you are sending MUCH more emails. As a result, more links are acquired and you're scaling much more.

So as you can see, there's a big advantage with the "Shotgun" approach where you'll spend less time working and get more links. Link building can be exhausting so the purpose of the course is to help you acquire a ton of links with minimal effort.

There are 7 modules in the course. Each come with videos and with a text summary.

1. Shotgun SkyScraper 101
2. Keywords & Content
3. Gathering Prospects
4. Data Management
5. Initial Outreach
6. Negotiation
7. Advanced TacticsSOP's and Job Descriptions

There's also a section on SOP's (standard operating procedures) where you can download a selection of documents that will help you scale your efforts.

An email picker tool is also available which makes it easy to extract the proper emails to use from a bulk upload of your hunter.io file.

Module 1: Shotgun SkyScraper 101

In this module you'll get an intro into what this method is all about. Mark will walk you throgh the fundamentals of Shotgun Skyscraper link building, why it's so good, who should use it, when and when not to use it and what the expectations and results should be. 

When you compare it to guest posting, every guest post you do requires you to write brand new content which really adds up to time & money. With the Shotgun Skycraper technique, you're able to get multiple links with just that one article.

Module 2: Keywords & Content

Here, you will learn how to target the right keywords with the right content. One thing you need to keep in mind though, the keyword research that you are used to is not going to be the same with Shotgun Skyscraper keyword research. This is because you're not trying to rank that content, we are going to build links to it.

The objective here is that you're looking for "info" content where there's tons of competition. In other words, we don't really care if anyone is going to read our Shotgun Skyscraper content, it's sole purpose is to acquire links to it. 

You will need ahrefs for this because Mark uses it in the video training, so do keep that in mind. You can get a $7 trial to start and then it's $99 a month. You can do a group buy if you wish which I don't really recommend but it's an option to save some money.

There's 3 sections in this module with the longest video at 33 minutes.

Module 3: Gathering Prospects

Here you will learn how to gather a list of prospects to contact. You'll learn the most effective way to identify which sites to outreach to. These are sites that already link an an article about our topic - which is the Shotgun Skyscraper article that you will write for your site. 

Again, ahrefs will be needed for this research. Although this research is rather labour intensive, they do provide SOP's (standard operating procedures) which will help you scale this process fast. 

Another tool that you will need is hunter.io. This tool is used to identify the email address on all the sites you will be contacting. Since a lot of sites hide their address to avoid spam, this tool does a good job finding it - as long as it does exist. You can try this tool out for yourself as there is a chrome extension for it. For the purposes of the massive research you'll be doing though - you will need the paid version which starts at $34.

You do get provided with a tool that Mark built for free that helps automate this entire process, saving you a lot of time. At the end of the module you'll have a big list of prospects and their contact info to start your outreach.

Sorry about the ugly watermarks but there's this one guy that likes to steal my images for his own use and pass off as his own so I have to do it. Anyway, off to the next module.

Module 4: Data Management

In this module you'll going to learn exactly what the title says - data management. If this is not done, when you start to scale things it will fall apart unless your data is stored properly. That's what this module is all about and will show you just that.

You'll get a quick intro to data management which will explain some of the nuances specifically with Shotgun Skyscraper.

There are 4 main data sheets that you need to keep which I will illustrate from the course content below. The master database is extremely important as you'll need to check your new batch files against the master data base to ensure you aren't outreaching to the same people over and over. 

By the end of this module, you will have all four databases set up and working for your campaign. Each one of these has a separate video and text instruction, with the template available for download for each.

I'm glad they set this up because with the amount of data you're going to consume, not managing it would be a disaster. Very helpful that this process is done for you.

Module 5: Initial Outreach

In this module you are going to send out your first campaign based on all the action you have taken so far. 

You're going to learn the proper email settings to ensure that you will obtain maximum delivery on your emails. You'll also be taught proper subject lines and be provided with a number of outreach templates which can be customized. 

You will be shown how to properly customize them and this is encouraged as it can make a greater impact. 

You will load up your first campaign into another tool called Mailshake. This tool is a requirement and relatively inexpensive at $19 a month. 

The goal in this module is to send out your very first Shotgun Skycraper outreach campaign. There's quite a bit of video and textual / image content here so this will take some time to go through however it's explained well. Below are the topics covered directly from the course. 

Module 6: Negotiation

Here comes the fun part - negotiation. When you get responses from your prospects, there sometimes can be a bit of back-and-forth that you'll have to go through. 

Keep in mind that site owners do get a lot of emails so what's key here is to stand out. What's great is that you're going to learn how to deal with every possible situation that can come up - no guessing on what you should do or say. Since these guys have dealt with thousands of contacts already, they pretty much have an answer for everything which is included in the course and passed off to you.

Mark says that the best links they have ever received was due to a lengthy conversation with the site owner. So don't let this scare you as i've been through all the modules in this section of the course and anyone can have the confidence to deal with this. Keep in mind this all done through email, not on the phone. So for you introverts out there - you're covered!

Now you're probably savvy enough to know that some site owners will expect you to pay for links. The guys at Authority Hacker NEVER pay for links and they will show you how to turn a paid request into a free one.

You'll also get some canned responses where you simply copy and paste. These are very effective and also eliminates guesswork on your end what to say.

When you're done this module you'll have a good understanding of link placement negotiation where some of these responses will turn into links.

Here's the topics in this module that you will learn:

Module 7: Advanced Tactics

This is the final module in the course. Here you are going to learn how to scale Shotgun Skyscraper in a non-spammy, ethical way. 

To scale, you will need some VA's and a mix of automation to make this work. Some advanced tactics include how to identify people's names using US Census data for better data quality. You'll also use Ahrefs content explorer to identify prospects. You will get more outreach templates that have a slightly different approach, prefiltering competitors to improve efficiency, warm up your accounts and manage your sending calendar, A/B testing, etc.

If you're interested in acquiring clients, you'll even be taught how to run Shotgun Skyscraper for clients. If you have an agency or thinking about starting one, i'm sure how you can see this course is going to help you rank your client sites. 

To be honest you may never need to use the tactics in this section because everything up until now should have been your main focus. I am glad though that these advanced strategies have been included because it can help you really scale this stuff.

Here's the topics in this final module:

SOP's and Job Descriptions

This section has a number of SOP (standard operating procedures) documents. They are designed to help you scale your operations effectively and to not just dive in without any thought. You need a structured approach and these documents are going to help with that.

These docs are designed for you or if you're hiring a team (outsourced p/t or f/t VA's) providing a set of technical instructions to drastically increase efficiency. It will also help with the onboarding process for new team members if needed.

Final Thoughts on the Shotgun Skyscraper Blueprint

What Gael and Mark from Authority Hacker has created here is a gamechanger for anyone that understands the importance of link building but wants to do it in an ethical way and not have to pay to acquire them.

If you've ever tried to get links from white hat techniques such as guest posting, you'll know how difficult it can be unless you actually just pay for these links. The purpose of this course is to show you a new way of getting a ton of quality links without actually having to pay for them.

If you know already how expensive it is to get a post created and posted on a site - average is about $100 a post which obviously will vary on the strength of the site, then you'll probably realize how valuable the Shotgun Skyscraper technique can be.

The creators of the course ended up getting over 4000 links for one site alone using this very technique and they didn't pay for any of them. 

Although the course is $997, it's slightly on the higher side. You'll aslo need a few other tools such as Ahrefs, Mailshake and Hunter.io. This is just a drop in the bucket if you calculate how much traditional outreach will cost you. If you're an agency owner I am sure you can see the benefit here and how much money this technique is going to save you.

The course is only going to be available for one week and this is not a scarcity tactic. You'll have a chance to pick it up between May 5 and May 13. After the 13th it is unclear if it will be offered again.

So if you're looking for a way to get free links to boost your SEO efforts which in turn leads to more PROFIT from sales, I highly recommend picking up The Shotgun Skyscraper Blueprint.