In the entirety of the web, you find many broad job descriptions that bring everything together. Here are a few:
- Design: A fine and experienced attention to color and position marks the designer apart from mere mortals. Design brings beauty and order to a project that would otherwise be over-run by disorder. An expression or emotion can be embedded by a designer’s touch. Many different media are available, from print to web to clothing. Works well with: Typography, Graphics
- Typography: The form of a letter-face can speak with nuanced emotion when in the hands of an experienced typographer. Words are the tools that make us human, and the form they take sets the tone and humanity of the message. Anywhere the written word exists, there you’ll find typography. Works well with: Design, Graphics
- Development: The modern world is help up by the logical structure of application development. This vast array of tools places entire lifetimes of information directly into our hands. Developers are an extremely diverse group, calling on a multitude of different languages to run entirely different systems. On the web alone, programmers use PHP, Ruby, ASP, SQL, X/HTML, CSS, Python, ECMAScript, and more. Works best with: Accessibility
- Graphics: Throughout the history of humankind, we have used color and shading to portray our deepest fears and most wanton desires. The graphic artist weaves palettes of colour and light into pleasing gradations or fun, vibrant dances of hue. Personality, mood, and business can all be wrapped up into a single logo. Works best with: Typography, Design
- Accessibility: The weak and the non-standard are often harshly ignored by the mainstream, but Accessibility gurus lend a strong hand to those who’s needs are different than most’s. Information is made available to the blind, the feeble, and the small-screened, through best-practices, standards, and common sense. The humble accessibility expert expands the world to all, and improves the user interface to enhance the user experience. Works best with: Social Media
- SEO: Often accused of dark deeds, the Search Engine Optimization expert cunningly sculpts Page Rank to improve the findability of websites. SEO is a science, and the experts are always attempting to deconstruct the black box. Works best with: Social Media
- Social Media: People have an innate need to be included in a community. By creating a community around a brand, social media experts gain followers with genuine loyalty to that brand. If the company takes suggestions from the community, a very powerful bond will form. Works best with: SEO
All are important, but i think good product and SEO, will be most important to serive in this industry.
I have to disagree. SEO helps your findability, but it’s completely useless if you have no social connections. Even big sites, which put tremendous money into social media (or just plain media), and get lots of hits, tend to have crappy SEO, crappy design, crappy structure, etc. In other words, it’s possible that social media is the deciding factor.
Overall, though, unless you’re a superstar, SEO is very important; and good design/development is utterly necessary if you want to keep the people who find you. In other words: Unless you’ve got a ton of cash, there is no ‘most important’ facet. Each are needed to survive, and they all play off each-other.