A weekly roundup of the most interesting and useful posts and articles on search / inbound marketing from the past week. 

Social Media & Content Marketing

Facebook Adds News Feed Noise Reducer
Facebook now auto-suggests adding “friends” with whom you have little interaction to a list where you will get fewer of their updates, but not have to unfriend them.

How to Build a Personal Brand Online
Video interview with Virante Director of Social Media Marketing Mark Traphagen about how he has used his personal brand to help build Virante’s business.

Key Asset for 2012 Business: The Social Media Marketing Pro
Why businesses now more than ever need to have their SMM in the hands of a professional, and how to find and nurture the right ones.

Video SEO Optimization Tips & Techniques
Everything you need to know to help your videos to rank high in search.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Firefox to Use Google Secure Search by Default: May Increase “Not Provided” Keyword Data
Firefox will include a type of Google search that excludes web publishers from seeing the keywords that brought traffic to their sites.

How to Rank for Keywords in Google Using Google+
CNN has no Google+ brand page, yet they can claim a featured spot in the Google+ “People and Pages” box in a Google search for “CNN.” Find out how they do it, and how you can claim such a strategic spot.

Google Algorithm Changes: An Infographic History
Infographic traces the fascinating history of the complex algorithms that drive Google search.

Paid Search Advertising (PPC)

Google Integrates New Display Ad Interface in AdWords
Over the next few weeks, AdWords managers will see Display advertising broken out into its own tab, which Google promises will make it easier to manage and target ads. In addition, the Keyword Contextual Targeting tool gets a major upgrade.

Three Common PPC Ad Copy Flops
Easy to miss errors that make your adds easy to miss.

Web Analytics

Why Shortner Links Show Inflated Statistics
How the incompatible handoffs between third party link shortening services and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook end up double ticking metrics.

Coming Soon: Google Analytics to Measure Social Media ROI
New Social Reports will enable marketers to scrutinize which social media channels yielded the most returns and the tactics which helped them achieve the desirable goals.

Google Analytics Adds Site Speed Reports to Measure Page Performance
GA adds greater granularity to its site speed reports to allow webmasters to pinpoint poorly performing pages.

For Clicks and Giggles

Two magicians use seven iPads to create a PR presentation for Stockholm that has to be seen.

Quarterback photo by ESPNHS. Used through a Creative Commons License.