Thinking about getting a dedicated IP address for your website because you’ve heard it will help boost your SEO? Contrary to what your web hosting company tells you, a dedicated IP address may or may not be better for the rankings or search engine optimization of your website. As it turns out, only certain kinds of websites will benefit from having a dedicated IP address.
Today, anyone with a website or blog has heard about SEO and how “good SEO” will have a positive impact on the amount of traffic and therefore money they will make from their site. Google considers a wide range of different factors when ranking websites, making SEO more important now than ever before. But will paying extra for a dedicated IP address really have a good effect on the rankings and overall performance of your website?
What is a Dedicated IP Address?
You might be thinking about getting a dedicated IP address for your blog or website without even really knowing what it is. If you own a website or blog and you pay a relatively low monthly cost for website hosting, your site is probably on a shared IP address. This means that your site shares an IP address with several other websites that also pay for web hosting from the same company as you. Because most sites use a relatively small amount of hosting resources, hosting companies put many of them on the same IP address to make things more economical for them, too. If you want a dedicated IP address, you will have to purchase it, but is it really worth it?
Google Does Not Differentiate Between Shared and Dedicated IP Addresses
Should you pay for a dedicated IP address from your web hosting service? Think about what Google, the king of SEO, has to say on the subject first. Google’s Matt Cutts has publicly stated that Google does not differentiate between IP addresses that are shared or dedicated. A huge percentage of todayís websites are hosted domains and as such share their IP address with multiple other websites. For the average website, a dedicated IP address does nothing to affect the search engine results for the site. If you were thinking that paying a few extra dollars a month would magically boost you up higher in Google’s rankings, sorry, mastering SEO is not that easy. So am I saying that a dedicated IP address is a waste of money? Not exactly.
Website Speed: Having Your Website Share An IP Address Can be Bad
If you run a small website or blog, chances are buying a dedicated IP address will have little to no effect on your website rankings. While you may not necessarily need to have your website hosted on a dedicated IP address, sharing an IP address with certain other websites can cause problems for you. For example, if another site with the same IP address receives high traffic, the speed of your site may be negatively affected if your host provider does not adequately and fairly allocate resources. While Google says that having a shared IP address will not hurt your SEO, having a slow site will. If your website is high volume, you should consider buying a dedicated server with IP Address in order to get the fastest page load times and speed that you can. You can look at high performance hosting like socialfoxhosting.com
Internet Security Issues for Sites on a Shared IP Address
Security can also be an issue for you if your website or blog shares an IP address. If another website on the same IP address has been deemed to be malware, your website can also be blocked by anti-virus software. It makes sense, right? If your website is unreachable, it will simply not get the traffic it needs and will not do well in search engine rankings.
E-Commerce Sites Should Have a Dedicated IP Address
Buying a dedicated IP address is also a good idea if you run an eCommerce website. SSL is essential to securely running an e-commerce site. While it is not necessary for websites to have a dedicated IP address for the latest SSL versions, older browsers do require it. Therefore, e-commerce websites that want to perform well across the board need to opt for the dedicated IP address. Good SEO strategies include ensuring optimal performance no matter what computer or browser your site visitors are using.
Having a dedicated IP address alone will not sky rocket your Google ranking and website traffic. However, if you run a high-traffic website or run an eCommerce store online and speed and website security are important to you, a dedicated IP address may be a good investment. You can usually get a dedicated IP for only a couple extra dollars a month.
David Price is a seasoned internet technology specialist currently managing IT and SEO for satellite internet provider Calera.
