GrokDotCom's Melissa Burdon posted on a familiar subject, the dichotomy of Traffic vs. Sales in The Battle Between Search Engine Optimization and Conversion: Who Wins?  According to Melissa:

"….Most of the companies who enjoy high organic search engine rankings, unfortunately have very low conversion rates; usually less than 2%.

The real problem lies in the fact that most companies will consider optimization of their website a failure if their traffic decreases or their search engine rankings drop. (You can tell a lot about a company by the metrics they prize.) However, if ranking is more important than sales, we are dealing with an Ego issue. I mean, would you rather have a #1 ranking, with 100,000 visitors and zero sales or would you rather have one visitor and one sale?"

This was the issue I expressed, in my own words, with my post on When Search Engine Ranking is not enough.  The problem, as I see it, is that many companies confuse Search Rankings with their Online Performance - they're different and you have to chose one over the the other:

"..The online marketing industry has been in a Search Engine Optimization mind-frame for the past decade. Many companies are so proud of their high search engine rankings, yet they know very little about their analytics and the value that they can get from finding out how their visitors are interacting with their sites. Very few companies even see a problem with their online performance because they've worked so hard to get ranked highly on search engines."

I'm much more focused on working with clients who are interested in conversions over rankings and want metrics.  I like the Grokdotcom article because it expresses a conflict I'm seeing played out over and over.

And, as Mike Moran says in his new book, still a manuscript - the best way to improve your site is to "fail" early and "fail often" - to try new things and figure out what works. 

Does they sound like someone who obsesses over Search Rankings?