When you are on shared hosting, you must share an IP addressed between you and other sites on that server. For some hosts, it may be five sites, ten sites, or 20 sites; for others, significantly cheaper web hosts and lower services maybe 100 sites or even 1000 sites.
You read in this article.
- The Legend of bad neighbors
- Other risks of shared IP addresses Shared IP Addresses
- Email fraud or Email Spoofing
- Advantages of having a dedicated IP
- Use only dedicated resources
Does a dedicated IP address improve your site’s SEO ranking? What are the benefits of having a dedicated IP, and how will it affect our site’s SEO?
When you come across a challenge like my question, the first thing that comes to mind is the concept of a bad neighbor. I want to discuss whether having a Dedicated IP effectively improves your site’s SEO. After completing the website design, go for shared hosting or use a dedicated server for your website to get better SEO results.
The Legend of bad neighbors
Let’s start with bad neighbors since I’ve already mentioned it as a concept.
On shared hosting, you must share an IP addressitted between you and other sites on that server. For some hosts, it may be five sites, ten sites, or 20 sites; for others, significantly cheaper web hosts and lower services may be 100 sites or even 1000 sites.
Now suppose there are 1000 sites on the server, 999 of which are spam blogs, unethical sites, and other criminals of cyberspace. There seems to be a straightforward way for Google to remove all shared hosting sites; that is, it will penalize and remove 999 non-reputable sites and one good site.
Of course, the problem is that the IP address can be changed easily; every web hosting company has documents and rules on how to change the ip, explaining how you can do it. But this replacement also takes a few days.
Google does not consider the site’s IP address a factor for SEO and spam. It means that your IP is better and clean is not considered a positive factor that will improve the ranking of your search results. But, if your IP is added to the blocklist, many problems will start. Good sites are removed along with spam sites which are worrying.
A word from Google’s mouth that directly points to this:
Matt Cutts (Matt Cutts) has answered on his blog the question people asked about shared IP addresses vs. dedicated IP.
His post from 2006 refers to a 2003 video interview with a Google CTO:
Google treats shared hosting domains and their links almost identical to domains with unique IP addresses. If your ISP has configured your virtual hosting correctly, you will never feel the difference between the two. We see a minimal number of ISPs with complex virtual hosting setups every month.
It seems that shared IP addresses are worse than unique IP addresses. But this answer, which was said in 2006, is almost outdated and may be valid for a year or two. So it is somewhat unreliable and cannot be hoped for.
But I also found a newer version of Google’s words. Here is a shared server that manages 26,000 websites; this video is from Matt Cutts in 2010:
I understand Google also knows that hosting and shared hosting are happening, and you have no control over it, and you can’t help anyone with this IP address and class c subnet. If you are forced to use these IP addresses, spammers are very smart and will quickly migrate to a new IP address. So usually, this is not a quick way to deal with them, and it will not have any results.
He points out that having a good website on a server with many nasty and dirty sites will require more hair-splitting and revision. Google will look at that site to see if it’s just some customers registered on a shared server that is disconnected or if it’s a spammer trying to use that page as a money-making site for the use of a personal blog or something similar.
In any case, by having a good and healthy site in the wrong area and polluted neighbors, you invite Google to do a deeper investigation, which is not good.
It should be noted that if Google has no reason to penalize your site’s SEO, simply because you are located in a bad neighborhood will not do this and will not penalize you. Only if you use gray hat techniques or some black hat techniques will it give you a deeper and more detailed look. You will only get more attention and scrutiny and nothing more.
Other risks of shared IP addresses Shared IP Addresses
That said, you’re not entirely risk-free when using shared hosting.
First, your web hosting may not be configured correctly, as stated in the Google Director Matt Cutts interview. If your hosting settings are not correct, you may be subject to fines that are used for other sites.
Most importantly, you will be at risk of malicious software and malware and maybe become a tool for espionage.
Considering the concept of malware, you are on shared hosting where you know other sites are operating alongside you. Currently, the standard method used for this is to separate areas from each other through sandboxed virtual machines.
What is a sandbox?
Sandbox is a protection system that performs the desired operation in a limited and closed environment that is safe so that if something unusual happens, it is separated from the main event and does not cause harm. The network access of that operation is limited and does not allow damage to the system.
In shared hosting, if the settings and configuration of the server have been done, malware and malicious agents cannot pass through the privacy of its owner, and other sites that operate jointly on that server are safe.
Email fraud or Email Spoofing
There are also other potential issues, such as sending spam emails. Email addresses are like domain names and are used to hide the site’s IP address, which means that if you know the IP address of a place, you can view the site’s contents without needing a domain. I am not an expert in the behind-the-scenes operations of email servers, what they do, but it is possible that someone who has the IP address of the relevant site and access to it and is in the neighborhood of your host can introduce himself instead of you and on your behalf. Email because your IP addresses are shared, and it seems pretty logical.
It can even launch its advertising campaigns and use the load and traffic of your hosting to introduce itself, and finally, you will suffer if your IP address is blocked and spammed, you will suffer.
Of course, you can solve these issues; you can request to leave the blacklist and make your IP safe again, but you will also lose time, which will be a negative item for you and the next series. You will be spammed much more quickly.
Remember to know that you have been blocked; you must monitor regularly and be careful to find out before the incident occurs or to take action after strange events, which are undoubtedly both cases. They need to spend time and money.
Advantages of having a dedicated IP
Installing an SSL certificate
One of the most significant advantages of having a dedicated IP is that setting up an SSL certificate is much easier.
In fact, before 2007 or earlier, installing an SSL security certificate on a hosted or shared hosting site was impossible. To use the SSL certificate, it was mandatory to have a dedicated IP address because the SSL certificate was issued on the IP.
It is interesting to know that if you used to buy an SSL certificate for your site which was on a shared hosting server, your other neighboring sites would also have SSL; that is, all your neighboring sites would also benefit from the SSL certificate.
The solution to this problem is called SNI. SNI stands for Server Name Indication. which was initially implemented as a patch for OpenSSL in 2004 and was widely used in 2006 as active development and finally in 2007. Most browsers and servers supported SNI in 2007, and some did not until then. For example, blackberry browsers did not support it until 2013, Apache did not approve it until 2009, and Microsoft was able to accept it in 2012. You can find more detailed information on SNI Wikipedia and how and when the browser supports it. View different servers.
Site speed
Also, you are worried about the speed of the site. As mentioned above, being on a shared server means sharing server resources with an unknown number of other websites whose numbers, traffic, and consumption you do not know. If some of these sites are heavy and heavy, they may affect your site and force you to use server resources. If a post goes viral on other websites on your server, the server your site is on goes down, well, your site is down too.
Of course, not all shared servers will be like this, depending on how your hosting servers are configured. Your server may be set up correctly, guaranteeing specific resources and not harming you if other sites use the server too much. Also, regarding the access permissions of each host to the files on the server, you can limit it to the domain of the same host in such a way that it only damages itself, and the rest of the sites and files on the server are not affected by other host’s viruses.
Other benefits of having a dedicated IP
A dedicated IP has other advantages that will be used more or less. For example, scripts and software only work with a dedicated IP. If you were using a shared host, you would have to get a dedicated IP and disconnect from the shared server.
Use only dedicated resources.
There are many problems with shared servers. It is much easier to migrate to a dedicated server with a separate host. If you have a shared IP address and find that your email service has stopped and is down. First, you have to wonder and look for whether this interruption is caused by your site or another site that shares with your server being disturbed and sending spam. If you have had a private IP from the beginning and this problem has occurred to you, you are sure that your website has been disrupted, and you can effortlessly search and find it and quickly act to fix and solve the problem.
You can use servers with shared IP if having a dedicated host is expensive, but remember that you may face many problems at any moment. Of course, all of this depends on the extent to which the owners of your server and the hosting company have been able to consider appropriate settings for the server and reduce these attacks and problems.
However, in a bad neighborhood with bad neighbors, you are always in danger, and remember that you may be under scrutiny by Google at any moment. So, if you use black hat SEO measures, this is the worst thing for you, and you will become a loser.
Read about black hat and white hat SEO, and don’t be unaware of the world around you; not everyone uses the usual and natural methods to SEO their site, and designing a site and managing its content alone may not be enough. Read about black-and-white SEO and try to be gray. Don’t be too sane and rational because you’ll waste your time and energy, and don’t be so black that you’ll get caught and still waste your time.