The Search Motivation Framework

“Googling” doesn’t just take place in search engines.

People search within the social apps they use––Facebook. LinkedIn. TikTok.

They ask questions of their followers.

They follow the work/recommendations of people they trust.

They search through relevant subreddits. Facebook Groups. Slack Communities.

They search for and read product reviews.

And yeah, sometimes, they use Google.

The medium is less important than understanding the motivation for why people search in the first place.

What drives people to search for anything online?

A couple of years ago I published a framework called, The Search Motivation Framework.

I designed it to make it easy for me, and anyone else using it, to come up with dozens (or even hundreds) of relevant topics by aligning with the core motivations that drive anyone to search for anything online (from a professional perspective.)

The best part? Because searching happens everywhere, the content you create will also be more likely to connect everywhere, too.

Your strategy becomes immune to algorithm changes––search, social..whatever––because you’ve engineered your content to appeal to the motivations of your audience everywhere. No matter where they’re searching.

Let’s get into the framework…

Recommendations. Inspiration. Education. Execution.

Most anything people search for online can be traced back to one of these core 4 motivations.

People “search” in order to:

find recommendations to assist their decision-making process
look for inspiration and examples to model their next steps or confirm they’re on the right track
learn something new
get something done

The framework is a simple one: create content that serves all 4 of these motivations.

The best part? One topic, say finding the right daypack for an upcoming hike, can yield four unique pieces of content by leveraging each motivation.

That’s the intended and ideal use of this model. Otherwise, most teams would end up posting nothing but “how-to” listicles, which, might be okay for satisfying the Education motivation.

But, what about the rest?

Your audience isn’t one-dimensional. Your content strategy shouldn’t be either.

Let’s get into the core four motivations and how one topic can look across all four.

Recommendation

Decision-making is hard. This is why we often look for starting points to help us narrow down the seemingly endless options for solving a problem.

This is also why recommendations––from sources you trust––hold such psychological weight in our decision-making ability.

Recommendations can help provide that starting point.

They (your audience) may not have gotten started yet, and, they know there are lots of viable options out there.

But, which ones are best? Which one(s) do you recommend? Which one is the most popular? Highest rated? Best quality? Highest performing? Most cost-effective?

Your audience is asking these questions.

Here’s what that might sound like:

Topic A: They want to know the best daypacks for hiking
Topic B: They want to know which brand manufactures the highest quality sink faucet for their kitchen
Topic C: They want to know which paid social platform is best for advertising their software product to engineers

Also important to keep in mind: Recommendations can build trust, but only when they’re both informed and objective.

Keep it real.

Inspiration

Once we get started in solving a problem, we often look for guideposts to let us know that we’re on the right track.

“Is this how this is supposed to look/work?”

“How are other people solving this?”

“Which color would look best here?”

“Am I doing this right?”

We alone cannot answer these questions, so we seek inspiration to guide us along our journey of problem-solving.

We want examples. We want pictures. We want options.

Something that helps us to determine, 1) which path to take, or 2) that we’re on the right path.

Here’s what that might sound like:

Topic 2A: They want to know the best and most beautiful day hikes in the state
Topic 2B: They want to see pictures of brushed nickel vs. chrome vs. gold kitchen sink faucets
Topic 2C: They want to see/read examples of high-converting ad copy

Most brands over-index on Education––telling people how to solve a problem––when there’s equal power in showing people what it looks like once the problem is solved.

Model the solution. Provide your audience with the guideposts they need so they can confirm they’re on the right track.

Education

This is the one motivation that needs no introduction.

Most brands, as I mentioned earlier, tend to over-index here. And for good reason.

People want the essentials of what they need to know wrapped up nicely.

Here’s what that might sound like:

Topic 3A: They want to learn the essentials for what to pack for an upcoming 2-day hike
Topic 3B: They want to learn how to replace their current kitchen sink faucet without hiring a contractor
Topic 3C: They want to learn how to write high-converting ad copy for an upcoming Facebook campaign

Execution

Have you ever been on your hands and knees trying to complete a DIY project at home and whipped out your phone to consult YouTube or some other source on how to get something done?

Or realize you were missing a tool that’s needed to complete the project?

Or realize you accidentally threw out the instructions and are stuck at step 7?

There is a segment of your audience going through it like this every day. They’re not evaluating. They’re not looking for education or inspiration or recommendations.

They’re trying to get the thing done right now. And they need an assist.

Here’s what that might sound like:

Topic 4A: They want to know which retailer they should buy their daypack from (how’s cost, shipping, returns, etc.)
Topic 4B: They want to know which tools to buy in order to replace their sink faucet this weekend
Topic 4C: They want to download ad copy templates to help with drafting up ad copy this week

Due to the nature of this motivation, this content needs to be lean and devoid of any filler or BS.

A checklist. A template. A list of instructions. Something that will help someone in your audience do this thing right now.

How to Develop Dozens of Relevant Topics

The core 4 motivations are only the start.

Next, you can build topic clusters that allow you to come up with even more relevant angles based on specific criteria.

Use this Topic Pyramid to think of your topic cluster in 4 levels, each one allowing you to drill further into the focus area and get more specific.

Once you’ve chosen your topic, you can go even deeper based on a few qualifiers.

Here’s an example based on the topic “content marketing strategy”:

Level 2: Uses a general qualifier, “b2b content marketing strategy”, to go deeper into the topic cluster, rank for related keywords, and open up more topic angles.

Level 3: Uses qualifiers based on a specific subject area (content marketing for SaaS, ecommerce, manufacturing, etc.) to allow you to come up with even more ideas and target a bunch more related keywords.
Level 4: Goes deep into subject areas within a niche. This is where you can come up with TONS of ideas, i.e. using Google Sheets to plan your content marketing, how to plan a manufacturing editorial calendar, etc.

Now let’s tie it all together and put this into practice.

Here’s how you could use a topic cluster, the Search Motivation Framework, and the Topic Pyramid to come up with several ideas.

This example is using the Inspiration motivation to come up with some ideas. I’ve only included one example for each level, but depending on the topic, you could literally come up with dozens.

And this one uses the Education motivation to come up with some ideas.

Complete the Editorial Planning

Okay. So now the hard part is (mostly) over. Now, we just have to round out the idea in the assignment brief and whatever project management tool your team is using so that your team and your writers will have everything they need to really make this a great piece of content.

Things like:

Related Keywords: List out the top related keywords in relation to the primary keyword. This will help inform the “Headlines” section later.
Content-Type: Pillar page. Blog post. Guest post (these are often used as a vehicle for link-building.)
Motivation: Select the search motivation you outlined above for this specific post.
Status: Do we already have content on this subject we should start building links to? Is there an existing post that we should update? Or, do we need to publish something new?
Title: What’s the suggested title of the blog post?
Headlines: Write out what the H2s should be ahead of time. This will help the entire process move quickly and ensure your post and headlines are optimized. This section should rely heavily on the “Related Keywords” section for inspiration.
Links: Do we already have posts written about this subject or ones closely related to it? Make sure to paste those links in this column so our writers know to include internal links to those posts, thus raising our internal link profile and the page authority of other posts.
URL: What’s the suggested URL?

Once the topics are approved (usually by an editorial manager or equivalent), these topics can then be added to whatever project management tool you’re using to assign work to writers.

Include all of this information in the task so the writer has everything they need to create great and high-performing content.

The Search Motivation Framework