Why You Should Use a Dedicated IP Address on a Linux Shared Hosting Environment

Let’s assume you are buying linux shared hosting for a new blog. At the time of purchase you will probably have to make a choice between going with a shared IP address or a dedicated one. Having a shared IP means that your site will have the same IP address as all the sites hosted in the same server.

Having a dedicated IP address is an optional (and usually chargeable) service provided by many webhosting providers. This in practice means that though your site will be hosted in the same server as many other websites, your IP address will be different.

SEO-wise, having a dedicated IP address in a shared hosting environment maybe a small move and there are two big reasons for that. Moreover, If you want a dedicated IP then go with bluehost web hosting.

Avoiding Bad Neighbors: Link Farms and Spam Sites

Let’s say you’re hosting a very prestigious business blog in a Linux shared hosting facility. Let’s also assume that your website is the first one in the server. Your site occupies a small part of the server.

One day, an SEO firm obtains all the remaining space on that server and uses it to host a bunch of link farm websites. As soon as Google identifies the link farm it deindexes all the sites that belong to that network of sites. Google also registers the server’s negative SEO profile. This will most likely affect all the websites sharing that space – including your perfectly innocuous business blog.

Fortunately, this is a rather extreme example. On a shared server with a more reasonable blend of ‘spammy’ and ‘normal’ websites, there’s not much to worry about.

Private SSL Certificates

The secret is out: installing an SSL certificate to your website could help result in a minor ranking boost in Google Search.

Thanks to a recent cPanel update, adding multiple SSL certificates on a shared IP has quickly become a common practice. Server Name Indication (SNI) allows a server to install multiple certificates to the same IP address. The only issue is that some older-version browsers are having trouble with parsing all this new information. In other words, if your website is hosted on a shared server, a non-negligible number of your visitors will receive an error message related to distrusted connections. Needless to say, a dedicated IP sidesteps this issue entirely.

In my opinion, a dedicated IP address is the right choice for Search Engine Optimisation. A word of caution, however, switching to the dedicated option, while in a shared hosting server, usually results in a 4 to 8-hour DNS update. During this period, some of your visitors may not be able to access your website at all.

As you might imagine, switching to a dedicated IP is not something that should be done in the midst of a business campaign or an important promotion. As they say, a little planning goes a long way.

Sources:

https://moz.com/community/q/the-benefits-from-having-a-dedicated-ip

https://www.webhostingology.com/