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I would agree with the 3 the proponents say but add 1 other and that is that seo is become more about trust/useful user friendly sites. So if you have posts on your blog which are getting comments this must be a key indicator to search engines that your content (post) is worth talking about and thus I'm sure helps with seo.

Quite possible Joost de Valk is correct that his top seo content are pages and not posts but posts are not pages they're something very different. Just my thoughts.

Hi JJ,

most definitely you want to have hosting from UK if this is your target audience as this is going to help you in a number of ways.

First it will help with speed - faster page loads for users in UK

Help with search engine positions for Google UK - most people searching in the UK use Google UK, however not all so you still want to keep a track on Google COM too.

With regards to the second part of your question, dedicated or shared hosting. Dedicated hosting, from my understanding is really designed for large websites getting large amounts of traffic or even eCommerce sites where they're better with dedicated hosting. From my limited knowledge I think that for a -web design company' website shared hosting is ok, but see what others say first:)