Backlinko: who owns it now, what the five sections hold, and where its data studies are still the best of their kind

Backlinko is one of the few SEO publications that built its reputation on doing original work rather than summarising other people's. It was founded by Brian Dean, it is where the term Skyscraper Technique comes from, and its long guides and large sample studies are quoted across the industry, often by people who have never checked the method. The fact that changes how you read it is in the footer: the site states it is a trademark of Semrush Inc, read on 20 October 2026. That is disclosed, which is the right thing to do, and it is worth carrying with you when a page on the site recommends a tool.

What is on it, section by section

Section	What it holds	What it is good for
Learn	Hub pages gathering the long guides by subject	Starting a subject from nothing. These are the pages the site is known for
Blog	Shorter articles and the research write-ups	The data studies, which are the most valuable thing here
Newsletter	A regular email	Keeping half an eye on the subject without visiting
Templates	Downloadable working files	Saving an hour on a document you were going to build anyway
Best SEO Tools	Tool roundups and comparisons	Seeing the field, with the ownership note below in mind

The navigation also carries links to Semrush's own AI visibility product and to a Semrush free trial, which tells you plainly what commercial job the site now does alongside publishing.

The ownership, stated plainly

Brian Dean built the site and sold it to Semrush, with the acquisition announced in 2022, and the current footer records Semrush Inc as the trademark holder. He still teaches on Semrush Academy, where the SEO crash course under his name runs to seven lessons and about fifty minutes, so the editorial connection has not vanished.

None of that makes the material unreliable. It makes one category of page worth reading differently: a tool comparison published by a company that sells one of the tools is a disclosed conflict rather than a hidden one, and the sensible response is to use the roundup to learn what the field contains and to get the shortlist tested somewhere with no stake in the answer. The same test applies to every vendor publication, including the one you are reading now, which is run by a company that sells a measurement product.

How to read one of its data studies

The studies are the reason to bookmark the site, and they are also the thing most often misquoted. Five habits keep them useful.

• Read the method section before the headline. What was sampled, how many, from which source, over what period. A study that names its sample and its tool is a study you can weigh.
• Correlation is the claim being made. These studies mostly report that two things move together. That is useful and it is not a statement that one causes the other, and the better write-ups say so themselves.
• Check the date, then check whether the subject moved. A study of search results from several years ago describes a system that has changed. The method may still be worth copying even when the finding is stale.
• Look at who supplied the data. Large studies run on a tool vendor's index, which has its own coverage and its own blind spots. Knowing whose index it was tells you what the study could and could not see.
• Use the numbers as direction, not as targets. A median word count from a correlation study is not a specification for your next page, and treating it as one is how thin 2,000 word articles get written.

What to use it for, and what to use instead

• For learning a subject from scratch, the Learn hubs are among the better free material in the category. Check the last updated date on any page about a surface Google has changed recently.
• For settled facts about how Google works, go to Google's own documentation first and treat any publication as commentary on it. What each of Google's documents actually settles is mapped in the documentation Google publishes itself.
• For a reading rotation rather than one site, a short list beats a favourite, and ours is in what the Semrush blog covers and the rest of a reading list.
• For choosing a tool after reading a roundup, work from the one job you need it to do rather than from a feature table, which is the argument in pick by the one job you actually use it for.
• For free structured training with an exam, the Academy is a different offer from the blog, and what it costs, what the certificate is worth and the exam rules are in Semrush Academy.

The Skyscraper Technique, since this is where it comes from

The idea, as published on the site, is three steps: find content in your subject that has earned a lot of links, build something clearly better on the same subject, then approach the people who linked to the original and tell them yours exists. It is a real method and it has aged in a specific way. The building step still works, because a genuinely better page on a subject people need is always worth having. The outreach step has become much harder, because the same template has been sent several million times and the people receiving it have learned to delete it. If you run it today, the honest version is: build the better thing first, then approach a short list of people with a reason that is specific to each one.

Questions about Backlinko

Who owns Backlinko?

Semrush. The site's own footer records it as a trademark of Semrush Inc, and the acquisition from its founder was announced in 2022.

Is Brian Dean still writing it?

He founded the site and is credited on the material he wrote. The publication is now Semrush's, and he teaches an SEO course on Semrush Academy under his own name.

Is Backlinko free?

The guides, the blog and the templates are free and need no account. The newsletter costs an email address. The products the site links to are Semrush's and are priced separately.

Is it trustworthy?

For method and for original research, it is among the better sources in the category, and the studies publish enough of their method to be checked. For tool recommendations, read it as a publication owned by a tool company, which it discloses, and verify a shortlist against a source with nothing to sell you.

What is Backlinko best known for?

Long single page guides, large sample studies of search results, and the Skyscraper Technique, which is the term most of the industry now uses for the build-better-then-outreach method.

Is it still worth reading in 2026?

Yes, for the hubs and the research. Pair it with Google's own documentation for anything factual about how search works, and check the update date on any page describing a surface that has changed recently.

The study nobody in this category has run on your own name

Backlinko's best work is the same move repeated: take a question everybody argues about, gather a large enough sample to answer it, and publish the method with the result. The version of that nobody has run for your business is the one that now decides shortlists. A buyer asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude who to use in your category, and the answer names two or three companies with a sentence each, built from what has been published about them. Asked repeatedly and recorded, that is a sample you can actually read. AI Knows Us asks those buying questions across the main assistants and records which companies get named and what the answers were built from.