Bookshelf of Horrors: 66 of the Worst Search Marketing Books You’ll Never Read

Posted In News & Events

Greetings, guys and ghouls. Halloween is just around the corner, and I don’t know about you, but here at AIMCLEAR we love a good scare. Any seasoned search marketer will tell you that in our industry, there’s blood-curdling terrors and freak-shows to behold… if you know where to look. From downright dreadful habits of search conference speakers to positively hair-raising social media faux pas, the petrifying threat of intra-community bloodshed… sometimes it’s like we’re one bucket of pig’s blood short of a B-rated horror flick. (Side note: Carrie = not B-rated.)

But perhaps one of the most spine-chilling aversions the search marketer could encounter is a so-called marketing must-read filled with outdated, misguided, flavor-of-the-month type garble, all held together by a gaudy eyesore of a book jacket and aÂ really god-awful title. Â In the [evil] spirit of sharing a spook and scream with our friends in the online marketing industry, we tapped into our Twitter communities this morning to help assemble the quintessential bookshelf of horrors. I give you: 66 of the Worst Search Marketing Books You’ll Never Read.

Special hat-tip to Bryan Eisenberg and AIMCLEAR‘s own Matt Peterson for inspiring this post. Since they’re the brains behind the blog, they get to go first. Mmmmmmm, braaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiinnnsss…..

Matt Peterson | @Matt_Peterson

ME-Commerce: Self Centered Social Selling in the Cybersphere
Why Rats Turn Left: Master Irrational User Behavior Inside The Clickzone (a McCartney-Lennon collaboration with Marty Weintraub)
The How-To’s and Why’s of Competitive Speed Linking
Killer Plurk Ads: Do These Even Exist?
Tweet Ur Way 2 Congress: Convert Ur Followers 2 Legal U.S. Voters
Meta-Stuffing RankClicker! & Other Winning SEO Insults
Goalchieving Your KPIs through Logfile Analytics: A Comprehensive Pamphlet
Title Tag Optimization: A Guide for Optimizing Title Tags | Tutorial & How-To Book About Title Tag Optimization
Pasted Rage Wank – A Troubled Teenagers Guide to SEO
Dirty, Kinky Data: Avinash Tells All! (Seriously Though, We Love Avinash)

Bryan Eisenberg | @TheGrok

The Search Whisperer: Confessions of a Search Engine Optimist
The Geek’s Guide to Gaming Google for Good
Tales of a Marketing Renegade: The Marty Weintraub Story

Merry Morud | @merrymorud

Marketing Wolfpack: Ways to Manipulate & Take Advantage of America’s Sheep
In the Wild: Campy Low-budget Marketing Tactics Big Brands Can Learn From Local TV Advertising
The Yellow Pages Aren’t dead: How to Get Your Ads to Stay on People’s Front Porch
Click Cash! Perfecting the Gossip Blogz to Earn You Fast Cash

Netmeg | @netmeg

Maybe They’ll Find It

Paul David Madden | @PaulDavidMadden

Whitehat Link Building 101

Casey B. Yandle III | @cyandle

The Keyword Tag is King! Why Businesses Don’t Need Social Media & Why Your Business Doesn’t Need a Website in 2011

Alex Payne | @alexmpayne

Why Facebook is Dead and Where You Should Go Next
Retro-Marketing: Keeping the Myspace Alive
“Hey, Look Over Here!”

Claire Carlile | @claircarlile

Customer-Centricity: Any Colour As Long As It’s Black

Kerry Dean | @kerrydean

Rel Canonical & You: Sculpting the Modern Internet
Marketers Are People, Too (j/k LOL)
Learning to Lie With KPIs

Melissa Mackey | @mel66

Forget Negative Keywords: Broad Match is the Way to Go – PPC
SEO is Pointless – Just Buy All Your Traffic, It’s Easier

Scott Cowley | @scottcowley

Link To Google From Your Website And Other SEO Secrets Search Engines Don’t Want You To Know About
Blowing Up Foreign Embassies And Other Indirect Forms of Link Building

Elmer Boutin | @rehor

Get More Followers: How to Hypnotize the Masses Via Social Media

Lisa Raehsler | @LisarocksSEM

SEO is from Mars, PPC is from Venus

Aric McKeown | @aric

Random Keywords: Playing Darts While Blindfolded in a Dark Room and Benefiting
Social EncroachmentÂ Obsession: SEO and Why We Want To Be Stalked

David Taylor | @linkmonkey

Let’s 301 to My Room: Pulling at SEO Conferences
Ranker Spanker: How I Learned Everything About SEO From Being a Gimp

Bryant | @bryantdunivan

Marketing in the Age of Yahoo, Panda and You: A Survival Guide to Algorithm Updates, and Black Hat Society: Still Hackin’

Joe Leyba | @joeleyba

SEO Cloaking the Klingon Way
Overseas Link Building – Putting the Seoul Back in SEO

Chris Countey | @chriscountey

A Puppy in the Woods and Other Marketing Tactics We Can Learn from People Who Should Be in Jail
Make Them Look! Making Websites That Look Like Actual Eye Tracking Results

Tad Chef | @onreact_com

The Ultimate Guide to Kiss Social Media Ass for Fun and Profit

Angie Schottmuller | @aschottmuller

The SEM Health Plan: SEO Workouts & PPC Liposuction

Jason Meininge | @shadowdaddy

I Didn’t Know I Needed That! and Other Tales of Online Conversion Optimisation

Joshua Titsworth | @joshuatitsworth

SEO the CRO for SMO of ROI

Alyssa Engleson | @aengleson

My Eyes are Bleeding: Why Watching Realtime SERPs are Your Only Option
Hipster SEO: Page 1 is so Mainstream, Page 8 is Where to Be
Why Marketing Should be Left to the Interns

Last but not least, your [g]hostest-with-the-mostest had some ideas to toss in the pot:

Lauren Litwinka | @beebow

Imma Sit On Your Facebook! How Real Community Managers Squash Competition
Social Media Success: The Ryan Secrest Story
How to Win More Website Hits Like A Baller
SHUT YOUR FACE[book]! Why Social Media In the Workplace is a Really Terrible Idea
R-E-S-P-E-C-T:Â The Mark Zuckerberg Story
Persuasive Marketing: Getting Your Customers To Do Absolutely Anything, Even Kill A Puppy
There’s A Bandaid In My Burger! Sweeping Bad Social Media Under the Rug
RT, PLZ! Surefire Tactics To Get Your Social Media Story Heard
On-Page Optimization & Keywords: How To Stuff Them In The Right Holes, When, & Where
Shave The Panda: How To Feel Better About Yourself After You Lose All Of Your Site Traffic
Beneath The Bath Towel: Old Spice Guy Tell-All
Even Old MacDonald Had A Farm: The Legacy of Content Farming
Optimized Title Tags & Other Marketing Myths
Auto-Play Videos, Pop-Up Live Chats, Scrolling Marquees, & Other Ways To Refine Your Website
The Death of Site-Maps: Useless for Users, Pointless to Search Engines
2011: A MySpace Oddessy
You’re Doing It Wrong! Ways To Repurpose Advice From Your Ex-Girlfriend For Better Online Conversions

Big thanks to everyone from the Twittersphere for their shocking / stellar contributions. You guys have the best / worst sense of humor 🙂 Happy Halloween!