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PARDON MY FRANCH: I’M DONE CHASING THE ALGORITHM

ByKRISTIE CHRISTENSEN | BRANDING, PR & EVENT COUTURE

There was a time when I believed good marketing meant playing by Google’s rules.

Carefully chosen keywords.
Strategic phrasing.
Headings optimized just enough — but not too much.
Content written for people… but mostly for bots.

And listen — it worked.
At least on paper.

But somewhere along the way, something started to feel off.

The more I chased the algorithm, the less human my work felt. The more I optimized, the more generic the content became. Not bad — just… forgettable. Safe. Polite. Predictable.

And that’s when it hit me:

I wasn’t building authority anymore. I was feeding a system.

Here’s the Truth No One Likes to Say Out Loud

People don’t search for agencies like mine by typing industry jargon into Google.

They don’t wake up thinking:

  • “I need a brand presence strategist.”
  • “I should hire an experiential branding firm.”

They wake up thinking:

  • “Why isn’t my business getting traction?”
  • “Something about my brand feels off.”
  • “I’m doing all the things and it’s still not working.”
  • “I need to stand out — but I don’t know how.”

They search from frustration, not fluency.

And for years, agencies (myself included) tried to meet those very human questions with overly engineered content — hoping Google would reward us for being obedient.

The Relief Came When I Stopped Trying to Sound Searchable

Here’s the unexpected plot twist:

The moment I stopped writing for the algorithm…
My content got clearer.
More confident.
More honest.
More memorable.

Because Google doesn’t actually want keyword soup anymore. It wants answers. Depth. Authority. Clarity. Context.

It wants to send people to the page that makes them think, “Finally. Someone gets it.”

That’s not achieved through stuffing phrases into paragraphs.
It’s achieved through saying the thing out loud.

People Search for Problems. Google Connects Them to Authority.

That’s the whole game now.

You don’t need to repeat a phrase ten times.
You don’t need to chase trends.
You don’t need to contort your voice into something unnatural.

You need to:

  • Understand the problem
  • Speak to it clearly
  • Explain why it exists
  • Offer perspective that feels grounded and real

When you do that consistently, Google figures out the rest.

Quietly. Automatically. Without the burnout.

This Is the Difference Between Content and Presence

Content tries to be found.

Presence earns its place.

Presence lingers.
Presence gets shared.
Presence gets remembered.

And presence is built when you stop trying to impress machines and start respecting the intelligence of the people reading.

Pardon My Franch, but I’d rather be deeply understood by the right audience than perfectly optimized for everyone else.

That’s the difference.
And honestly?

It’s a relief.

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