Posted on October 28th, 2011

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of the most spine-chilling aversions the search marketer could encounter is a so-called marketing must-read filled with outdated, misguided, flavor-of-the-month type garble, all held together by a gaudy eyesore of a book jacket and a really god-awful title.  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 Encroachment 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: 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!

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  • Chris Countey

    My favorite: Let’s 301 to My Room: Pulling at SEO Conferences

  • Alan Bleiweiss

    Epic. Totally hilarious. And can’t wait to see some of these actually come out as satirical books!

  • Lisa Raehsler

    This is so fun! I like “Learning to Lie With KPIs”.

    Happy Halloween!

  • Scott Cowley

    Such an awesome collection. My personal faves:

    Learning to Lie With KPIs
    SEO the CRO for SMO of ROI
    Auto-Play Videos, Pop-Up Live Chats, Scrolling Marquees, & Other Ways To Refine Your Website

  • David Taylor aka @linkmonkey

    Brilliant post, my favourite: SEO is pointless – just buy all your traffic its easier!

  • Kathy J

    I can’t pick just one! These are all so great. Lauren, I really like
    Imma Sit On Your Facebook! How Real Community Managers Squash Competition, got a real chuckle out of that one. What a great post to end the work week! Happy Halloween

  • Lauren Litwinka

    Happy Halloween, one and all!!!!!

  • Angie Schottmuller

    What a great collection! Lying KPIs, Rage Pank, Klingon cloaking, Shut Your Face[book], and R-E-S-P-E-C-T… I’m ready for round 2! Numerous holidays are right around the corner for more inspirational themes. Keep these going for sure! =)

  • Angie Schottmuller

    BTW, nice job on the themed photo, Lauren!

  • Merry

    Wait…. what makes you think I wouldn’t read The Old Spice Guy Tell-All?! I am but a humble lady… 🙂

  • Lauren Litwinka

    @Angie – Say, thanks! I’ll have to take that idea under consideration. I’m not sure how I’d factor in Boxing Day, but… 🙂

    @Merry РDamn. Touch̩.

  • The Dan

    Totally enjoyed “2011: A MySpace Oddessy” think I may have to write this!!

    Totally bummed out that I slacked off and didn’t send you a few titles of my own

  • Lauren Litwinka

    @The Dan – You can always share them here 🙂

  • Andrew Goodman

    Here’s my contrib:

    Amoeba Marketing: The Genetic Code to Tapping Humanity’s Very Most Primal Instincts