The most fundamental objective of any SEO project should be to drive the bottom line. For a business this means delivering more revenue with favorable ROI. As a predecessor to determining the level of ROI impact, the SEO practitioner must focus on increasing the volume of relevant traffic to the site. This is a more important objective than anything related to rankings or number of links obtained. More relevant traffic should mean more revenue for the business (or more conversions for those whose websites are not specifically selling something).