Dedicated Server for SEO

[EcomLkwd]

Is it very important not to share the same IP address for SEO reasons?

[Shawn124]

Great question.  Even though it's been 3 years since this question has been asked, I feel like it's been a hot topic for the past 10 years.  No one knows the "REAL" answer, SEO's can just assume.  There are several companies in fact who even offer "SEO Hosting" as a package with unique IP addresses aka a Full C-Class IP so that every client will be on a dedicated IP.

Think of it as a house.  You and your website is 1 person living in a home.  Now imagine sharing your home with 1000 people or 1000 websites.  How does Google take you seriously if you're sharing a house aka IP addresses aka page speed (bandwidth).  If you're on a dedicated IP, you are the owner of that website...No ones spammy links, gambling, porn, directory submission sites will be shared with you, and if they are, people often question if those sites should be connected to your site...even though the website names are different.

I used an example from http://www.colocationamerica.com/why-a-dedicated-ip-address-is-important.htm that shows one website with a dedicated IP vs a shared IP.  If you do a reverse IP lookup on the domain with a shared IP, you get websites that have no affiliation with your website that can also be spammy and/or have spammy related links.  From what I remember, that's when you have bad neighborhood links, and I don't think your website wants to be a part of it.

As far as costs, a shared IP is basically free vs. a dedicated IP is $4-10/year.

Now if we're going to talk about the dedicated server vs a shared server....there's no question that if you're serious about eCommerce sales, you want to go with the dedicated server.  Prices vary from $99 up to $400 for reasonable speed.  Now as an example, if you were selling water bottles for $10 and your cost was $2, your margins (with the cost of shipping of processing fees), contribute to a $5 net profit.  If you sell between 5-30 bottles a month, there no need for a dedicated server just yet.  I would accept the fact that keyword rankings wouldn't be as high and would bank on Ebay and Amazon to stay above water.  But when you're serious about selling 30+ bottles, your sales will indeed offset the costs of a $99/month dedicated server.  Not only will the speed of the dedicated server lower the bounce rate and increase conversions of your ecommerce store, but your keyword rankings will have a significant boost when your page speed increases to a comfortable level so that your customer doesn't get irritated from the slow shared server speeds.

Best,

Shawn

[RedshiftWebDesign]

Hi Rachel,

I believe this topic is still hotly debated amongst many SEO punters. In my opinion, unless you have a need for a dedicated server or a dedicated IP address then it is not worth the expense.

A few areas where shared hosting could possibly impact your SEO would be where several of the sites sharing your IP address has been penalised for spamming or black hat techniques. Or if your shared hosting environment is struggling with load and is slowing your site speed. If neither of these are present then I wouldn't imagine a dedicated server or even just a dedicated IP (the two don't have to be linked - You can be on a shared hosting platform with a dedicated IP address), would give much, if any, ROI.

I wouldn't recommend you spend too much time on this issue. The expense of a dedicated IP or Dedicated Server is probably not worth your time or money.

Rather focus on the well known, well practiced and successful SEO techniques which you will find aplenty here at SEOmoz.

[Johnny4B]

Rachel,

I assume you mean as in Web Hosting, be it private or shared

We have plenty of clients who use shared hosting with non-related websites, using identical IP's as the hosting is shared, and we have never seen any performance issue in our work relating to the fact they used shared hosting.

I would go as far as saying the majority of websites use shared hosting, thus identical IP's, unless you specifically pay for a private IP.

I would suggest though ,and this is our own experiences, you have an IP that resides in the country you are trying to rank for assuming its local SEO

Regards

J