What's Most Important for SEO?

Want traffic? What SEO doesn't?

What is more important - traffic or rank?

Rank is a measure of sorts, but ultimately, isn't traffic more important?
Rank can bring you traffic, but there are other means without relying solely on the search engines.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) are now recognized as essential tools to the SEO process. Some even might say that they are a process all on their own.

Sounds like the same argument as whether branding is part of marketing or its own individual process. Either way, it's essential to be familiar with both - in both cases.

The thing about SMM/SMO is that it can also help your overall SERPs in many cases. But when you have true succcess with the Social networks and bookmarking sites, you can see almost instant results.

So much so, this is what has been labeled as the "Digg Effect". If your webhost isn't ready, a surge of 20,000 in one hour can take its toll on a server, often bringing a web host to its knees. This crippling affect can be avoided, which I'll comment on in another post some other time.

Anyone disagree that rank is more important than traffic?

Rank can equal traffic, with the right phrase optimization and conditions, but at the end of the day, traffic can convert while rank may or may not provide customers.