Which drives the web traffic - Search engine optimization or Page Rank?

Since July 07, rumors were wild that PR update is in the offing and I could actually see many deals for sale of links being put on hold so as these links would fetch a better price with increased PR (hopefully). We are about to enter September, but PR update is yet as elusive.

As we discussed in previous few issues too, PR hardly translates into increased traffic, and it seems to play role only to the extent that with both pages same, page with higher PR would rank higher in search engine result.
I must admit that the question that whether SEO is more important of PR is quite theoretical in the first place. As a webmaster both are precious. PR, if nothing else, at least helps to fetch a better price for blog writing assignments and links sales. Still, for a small webmaster, who is outsourcing services to boost SEO or for getting better page rank, the inevitable choice does come up as to on which service to allocate budget.
Search engine optimization, is a way of designing your website, and placing content in it, to satisfy search engine algorithms. Search engines are so sophisticated today that if you achieve that, then you will also satisfy visitors to your website. If you satisfy visitors to your website, then they will stay on the page they landed on and read it. They will then click to read other pages boosting your readership, click thru rate, sales conversions and every thing that comes along with faithful readership.
If the search engines feel that your content is good enough for a high placement in their indices for the search term, or keyword, that your visitor used to get to your web page, then it is more likely that you will achieve a relatively high stick rate of people to your site. However, if you concentrate on getting better Google PageRank, you would spend more of your time trying to get links back to your website than you would properly optimizing your site and filling it with good content. If you were successful in that difficult job, then Google, and possibly other search engines, would list you a bit higher in their indices, and mind it, still many sites with better content and lower PR may or rather would rank higher than your site.
You will then get visitors to your website, and the page they land on would have to be relevant to the search term they used or they will immediately leave.
Basically, what this proves is that it is essential to optimize your website for search engines in the classical way, but that for best results you must also have a good level of links back to your website. There are simple, ways to achieve both, but that would be the topic of another article. However, in the end, if you apply both, then you will achieve best results.
So, the answer to the question: SEO or Page Rank, is that neither is the more important. They are both equally important, but it is possible to do one better than the other and then you would be tempted to say that your way was best. But you would be wrong!