Hosting domains on different IPs - still good for SEO?
 

Apologies for my ignorance here, just never quite figured out the best practices for this stuff.

Say I've got a handful of blogs, feeder sites, a couple review sites, etc, that are intended to both make affiliate sales and to drive & target traffic. They're on a dedicated server. How would one best handle IP addresses for these?

My impression is Google penalizes domains clustered on one or a few IPs, but I've never gotten confirmation on that. Is it best to spread them out across a bunch of IPs, or actually make each have its own individual address, or does it really not matter in the grand scheme? How do you handle that stuff?

While Google has become a far less reliable traffic source for many of us, you can still get some amazing targeted surfers so it's still well worth paying attention to IMO.

You are going to get a ton of people saying it is vitally important and a ton saying it does absolutely nothing. The truth is both groups are wrong.

Having IP variance CAN be important, but ONLY if you do a long list of other things correctly as well. If you don't do those other things, it becomes meaningless. Even if you do all those things it is not a huge advantage but it can be worth doing, depending on the size and scope of your network.

Just my :2 cents:

Lol yes, this is why I've never quite known which way to go. Never truly investigated the nuts & bolts of the matter myself though.

Not knowing this "long list of things" to optimize the matter, am I understanding that clustering them all on the same IP isn't going to be much different than spreading them out across many? We're only talking 10-15 sites max here, BTW.

I wouldn't worry about it unless you are doing blackhat and anticipating Google banning and penalizing you. Chances are this is you and you should just use one or two IPs.

If you have to worry about it there are all sorts of other things you have to do to make it proper such as pay attention to your WHOIS info, hosting, linking, IP justifications,etc. Google isn't stupid and if they decide to really look they will find you unless you are good. The real question is how much do you have to do to avoid automated detection?

Are the sites all linking to each other? If so, multiple IPs is better. Things have definitely changed but I think you will find that most sites rank better if on their own IP (everything else being equal)

If you have sites linking to each other yes different IP for each site is useful, if not it's not worth it.

Just moved one of my sites to another host and instant traffic from Google.

Its a big brick in the wall for sure. I have 70 C class IP's for the network of blogs we run.

it doesnt matter in 90 % of cases

It as stated above can be very beneficial. I can help you with tips and such if you want on Skype.... host.wanted

Also if anyone wants MAJOR amounts of seo ips and will keep them for the long term, we have a major amount just for this purpose. Some clients of ours were very big into this for a while and they closed up shop due to owners passing away... So we have an arsenal of ips for those types of things left from that many year build up.

Which host? Did you leave Cyberwurx? I remember you raving about them in the past and was just curious...

I have a theory..

getting COUNTED and receiving CREDIT for backlinks are 2 different things.

Theory: I think that Google counts all of your backlinks, then subtracts that number from the number of backlinks it gave you credit for. If the remaining number is too big, you may get a penalty.

Just a theory.

It's why we trade links with sites spanning many different ip ranges and class c's @ www.hardlinks.org to gain your backlinks.

I moved it from an IP with eight other sites on it. I have plenty of sites on Cyberwurx doing quite well. This was all about uncrowding. I moved a .UK domain to hosting in the UK. So not sure if that has something to do with it as well.

Ah ok, I was actually looking at Cyberwurx in the future because I read one of your reviews about how fast they load Wordpress sites...

Here’s an analogy I’ve used several times before, and still holds true as much today as in 2005 ...

If you’re going to the bank to cash a check, there’s nothing wrong with driving your own car. If you’re going to the bank to rob it, on the other hand, driving your own car is going to make it ridiculously easy for the police to find you. However, even if you steal a car before robbing the bank, the odds of you actually getting away with the crime aren’t exactly favorable. There are just too many ways to get caught and eliminating the most obvious, be it your car or IP addresses, is of minimal help.

The answer? Don’t rob the bank and the convenience of using your own car (or shared IPs) will never become an issue. :thumbsup

I will say it is better to have different IPs when back linking to yourself however i have ranked plenty all linked same ip. Alexa will recognise your link no problems same ip.
I just think it works faster with different ips. Just be sure to ping your back links when updating. http://www.trafficshopping.com for bulk free submit sites.

Spread your network over as many hosts as possible. Use private whois too :2 cents:

it cant hurt :2 cents::2 cents::2 cents: