A new idea for the number and placement of semi-active hydraulic dampers (SHDs) achieving high performance is developed in this paper. This proposed method depends on using a few number of semi-active control devices distributed along the building’s height instead of the uniform distribution of these devices in all stories (traditional placement). Also, a design methodology for this proposed method is demonstrated. Two different strategies for structural designers are introduced; to obtain overall reduction in structural responses (strategy (A)) or to have more reduction in floor displacements with smaller reduction in total base shear (strategy (B)). The efficiency of proposed method, is compared firstly with the traditional placement of SHDs on low, medium, and high rise buildings. Secondly, it is investigated under different earthquake intensities using material nonlinearity. Several semi-actively controlled structures were considered in this paper starting gradually from three to sixty-story buildings. These buildings are modeled and analyzed using the finite element program ANSYS. Semi-active control forces are derived according to the Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) algorithm. However, to get control force for Proposed New Placement of SHDs some adoptions are done on inputs of LQR algorithm to be appropriated for this method. The results demonstrated that, compared to the traditional placement of SHDs, the new proposed arrangement of SHDs provides better structural performance in addition to being less costly.