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@inhouseninja

You can spend it on a few things. The one you choose depends on what is needed most for your website:

• Technical / Content Site Audit: Check if there are some important issues or quick wins to solve.

• Create a complete article about a topic (3000 - 5000 words). Look for writers who know a lot about the subject. Spend time and money on keyword research, content writing and images.

• Linkbuilding. Write (or pay a writer) to get some high quality blogs and look for guestpost opportunitues with dofollow backlinks. If they ask for money...Well, sometimes it's worth it.

I really depends on the quality of the content.

Google wants to know if the content of a page is worthy to show in the search results. So links towards a page are very important, if the content and technical SEO are done well. Links to a domein help to increase Pagerank from internal links, but incoming links from other sites are often stronger.