Hosting - Confirming my thoughts - looking to save money if wrong.

[dunivan]

Hello All,

My firm is looking into switching hosting from one service to another. Part of this process will inevitibly entail switching hosting. The 3 domains are currently set up as follows

Site#1: IP = 255.255.255.156
Site#2 + 3: IP = 255.255.255.157

These are the firms main sites, and account for 85-87% of the web traffic we recieve. My question is two fold:

1) With how it is currently set up, is my IP setup for sites 2 and 3 improper? I say it is, and could be the reason these two sites have been more of a battle improving any serp result then site 1.
2) The correct way to do this, is to have each site with its own hosting (and thus its own ip), so as to show site independence from each other and to have interlinking be a more viable and worthwhile traffic generator.

My take is that sites 2 and 3 should have been independently hosted on different servers, rather then both hosting on the one. And that in order to truly optimize each site from the hosting stand point they will need their own ip address for when it is made a factor.

If I am wrong, its great, my firm saves money. If I am right, I dont feel a what-if in the back of my mind because I have used your knowledge as well.

[Jean-Luc]

My take is that sites 2 and 3 should have been independently hosted on different servers, rather then both hosting on the one. And that in order to truly optimize each site from the hosting stand point they will need their own ip address for when it is made a factor.Well, I believe that you are wrong. Why would Google consider that your sites are better because they have unique IP addresses ? A dedicated IP address costs 2 $ a month at a popular hosting provider (HostGator). You can even have it with a shared hosting plan. I am pretty sure that there are tens of other factors to optimize that will have more impact on your SERP's.

Jean-Luc

[morestar]

I might agree with Jean-Luc but having a dedicated IP can help in one way - that is help in making sure you're not sharing your IP with possible black listed sites - in the future, down the road.

I have quite a few websites but have placed my two most important ones on a dedicated IP just for that one small and simple reason. With respect to a ranking factor well, all I can say is I don't have a problem sharing the IP with any other website - good or bad.

Every little bit counts.

[dunivan]

Am I using outdated info?

2006 and the sentiments have been re-published as recently as March, 2010

Links from other sites are one of the most important factors in getting your site ranked highly. If those links come from sites on the same IP address, it is a signal to the search engines that they are quite likely all owned by the same person, and they may discount the value of those links.

Late 2009:

if your site has a geographic TLD/ccTLD (like .co.nz) then we will not use the location of the server as well. Doing that would be a bit confusing, we can't really "average" between New Zealand and the USA... At any rate, if you are using a ccTLD like .co.nz you really don't have to worry about where you're hosting your website, the ccTLD is generally a much stronger signal than the server's location could ever be.

This implies to some degree that server location is looked at. It makes sense; I think it would be more beneficial to have links to site 2 coming from and independently hosted site 1 and site 3 then them sharing the same server and in turn creating a nest of our content which can easily be dismissed for a firm with the same kind of layout but independently hosted and interlink together.



Well, I believe that you are wrong. Why would Google consider that your sites are better because they have unique IP addresses ? A dedicated IP address costs 2 $ a month at a popular hosting provider (HostGator). You can even have it with a shared hosting plan. I am pretty sure that there are tens of other factors to optimize that will have more impact on your SERP's.

Jean-Luc

I dont think you read my post, this has nothing to do with optimizing for the SERPS, I do that everyday, this is how hosting changes and the decision I make can hurt or solidify the months of work I have already done. Nothing helps more then on page optimization, proper link building, and clean code. But with 200 factors in a SERP, it calls into question ones SEO competancies if they adopt the view you have displayed in your post - to let one factor "go", to concentrate on what one can read on any SEO website over and over again. We have no idea the true weights of anything in the algorithm, and because of this we must optimize for all factors regardless of how little you feel the weight is for it.


I might agree with Jean-Luc but having a dedicated IP can help in one way - that is help in making sure you're not sharing your IP with possible black listed sites - in the future, down the road.

I have quite a few websites but have placed my two most important ones on a dedicated IP just for that one small and simple reason. With respect to a ranking factor well, all I can say is I don't have a problem sharing the IP with any other website - good or bad.

Every little bit counts.

A dedicated IP would be helpful, but given the hosts were looking at, they have pretty rigorous TOS when it comes to whats hosted. Will this be less likely to either A) have an IP ban occur, or if it occurs B) Last for too long?

If an entire server at a "major" host were to be banned, I would imagine that is rectified fairly efficiently or else their hosting would be less desirable then others who do monitor whats on the server.

I do agree that every little bit counts though, tremendously!

[Jean-Luc]

I dont think you read my post, this has nothing to do with optimizing for the SERPS
I read your post. You wrote:
With how it is currently set up, is my IP setup for sites 2 and 3 improper? I say it is, and could be the reason these two sites have been more of a battle improving any serp result then site 1.
That said, I agree that it cannot hurt to use different IP addresses for your sites. I am not saying that you should not do it, just that you should not expect to obtain visible improvements in the serps.

I also agree that "every little bit counts", but I like to add that you get the best results when you focus your efforts on what pays.

Jean-Luc

[morestar]

With that said, I'm not implying that we rip our sites apart into SEO hell - up, down, left, right and center but we all definitely do everything we can bit by bit over time.

Rome wasn't made in a day they say even though that's highly debatable.

:shock: