Whats the difference?
To understand the answer we must first know how visitors get to any site. There are various ways visitors come to your site, they can come via a page link from another site(referral), they can click on a google search result from a keyword or keyword phrase (organic) or by knowing your site from social interaction(direct)or by a paid advertisement that you placed on another site (which is also a referral).
You have probably heard by now that "Content is King" and this is true. The more natural worded original content with proper meta information and authority status the higher the page rank. Which in turn results in higher placement on a web search result from any given keyword or keyword phrase that the visitor has entered in to the search engine. Page Rank is not as important as it once was, since a "search query [for] “Java” can bring results for code, coffee, or the Caribbean". However page rank results from SEO Tools, Google's Page Rank Tool, WebPRRank.com or any other online tools, even online history tools like Alexa.com, can mean a lot to potential advertisers. This also helps in monetizing your site, that is to make money from your site, it's products and/or services. BUT things are about to change.....more on that in a moment, or watch the video to the right.
Bruce Clay in the video above stated that many search engine providers are now Geo-Targeting their users. This was what the Yahoo! Mindset project was about, however if you go to their page you won't get much from it now, because they have integrated Geo-Targeting in to their search results. Geo-Targeting is when a search engine looks at your IP address (your street address for your computer on the Internet) and then gives you biased results based on that address. "We have done this on your behalf, automatically", a statement Bruce makes that Google has stated.
Bruce makes some interesting statements that Google has upped it's variable metrics, almost doubling them, to search for content in new ways. The days where text content was king is quickly coming to an end with the new search abilities of search spiders as they have the ability to enter mp3's, video and even flash on a web site. This new power will alter the way SEO works and how SEO companies must preform to keep their clients in competition by making sure the attributes or content on the site is not only meaningful, but engages the users in various ways from feedback on an article to interaction polls in flash and more!
One respondent the the videos said, "PR update endorses again on pleasant user experience. There are no shortcuts for gaining a high PR. The site has to be relevant." I think there is no better way of putting it.
Now SEO is very similar in definition to Page Rank, however it comes at from a different way. "Since searches [are] based on personalization and localization [they, the searches] are becoming more and more prevalent," Matt [Cult/google.com] echoes Bruce’s words that the central focus for SEO’s should be traffic and conversions. So here again "Content is King" in that the more relevant and specific a site's pages are with targeted keywords or keyword phrases the more likely that page's site will end up as a result from a users specific search.