Significance of Dedicated IP for SEO

Dedicated IP AddressThough the biggest search engine Google, says that you don’t need a dedicated IP address to rank better in search engines. But, I have noticed that after the recent Google PR updates most of the top ranking sites does have a dedicated IP address.

In this article, on UK Web Hosting Blog, I will explain you the advantages and the websites that will need to have a dedicated IP address to boost their search engine ranking.

If you are running an Anonymous FTP enabled website to allow your site visitors to download the files via your FTP server anonymously, then you are going to require a dedicated IP address. Typically, such types of sites are file sharing websites or big mirror download sites. Basically, you don’t need a dedicated IP to FTP files from a server through a username and password, but if you want your visitors to access files from ftp://yourdomain.com/file.zip without having to login, then get a dedicated IP.

For an e-commerce site, if you ever want to accept credit cards on your website, you are going to need a secure connection to do it. It is recommended as a website with a Dedicated IP address is considered to be more secured in comparison to a website with a Shared IP address. SSL certificate is what you will need to secure the customers credit cards details and to install SSL certificate you will require a dedicated IP for your site. So if you plan to accept credit cards through your website at any point, don’t forget to buy a dedicated IP. By installing a SSL cert, you can redirect visitors to the secure connection for your site.

Benefits or Advantages of Dedicated IP for SEO

Some people may say that having your website on a dedicated IP will give you a boost in search engine ranking results for that particular website. Well, I completely don’t agree with this.

If you have one website, a dedicated IP will not rank you higher in the search engines. BUT, if you have a multiple websites, it is to your advantage to put each of these on a different IP because the search engine is less likely to connect your websites together. Below example will help you understand this well:

Suppose you have 5 websites and want to make a 6th. Your 5 websites are ranked but are all on the same IP address. You place a link on each of your 5 websites to your 6th in order to pass on rank value to the 6th. The search engine will see that your new site has links from 5 websites. When it goes to check the IP’s for the sites linking to the 6th, it will find that they are all hosted on the same server because the IP addresses are the same. The search engine will assign less rank value to the 6th site because it knows that the 5 sites linking to it are all related / owned by the same person. If you put each site on a different IP, it will think that the sites are totally unrelated therefore assigning more link value to those links.

Also, according to a Google Engineer, when a Search Engine Spider first visits your website, it analyzes your website with basic HTML 1.0. If the Spider is successful in analyzing your website then it will go about and your website will get indexed. If your website will be hosted with a Dedicated IP address then it will get indexed directly as the spider will be able to resolve the website directly. Due to this the website will not be accessed with Basic HTML 1.0. Hence, if the website will be resolved soon, it will get indexed soon.

Posted under Search Engine Optimization, Webhosting

What is the Importance of Uptime and Downtime in Web Hosting?

Uptime and Downtime is one of the key issues that many website owners face. If you’re thinking to setup a mission critical website or an e-commerce site then uptime and downtime is the thing you should consider while looking for a web host. You may have heard about it lot of time, but those who haven’t, this article will explain you the exact meaning and importance of uptime and downtime in web hosting.

Definition of Uptime and Downtime

What is Uptime?

Uptime, put simply in the context of web hosting, is the time during which your site is fully operational (viewable and usable).

What is Downtime?

Downtime, conversely, is used to refer to the duration of time when a system is unavailable. These figures are usually given in percentages.

For e-commerce sites uptime and downtime is highly relevant because downtime could translate to lost revenues, and in this highly competitive world, it could very well mean your business’ survival.

Hence, it is important that you choose a web host that has a high uptime guarantee (the higher, the better). An uptime guarantee of 99.5 – 99.99% is realistic and considered to be very good in most cases.

Tips to make sure that the host you choose offers the finest deal:

  • Research your (potential) host’s uptime record and READ the fine print of their uptime guarantee (if they have, which you find in their Service Level Agreements).
  • Ask about your host (-to-be)’s disaster plans, redundancy and backups.
  • Re-check and make sure you get an uptime guarantee before signing and how reliable they are when it comes to refunding for and crediting downtimes.

Once you’ve found your host, it is necessary that you also monitor your site’s uptimes and downtimes to ensure you get what you pay for and also to see if they’re living up to their promise (so you can change hosts if they aren’t).

Quick Tips:

  • Finding 100% (or 99.99%) uptime is not easy nor is it cheap
  • Focus on quality of service and not on quantity. Don’t just look for hosts that offer you a refund for downtimes, instead, look for ones that actually live up to their ‘uptime guarantee’
  • Look for providers with good hardware (as it goes to redundancy)
  • SLA’s and ‘uptime guarantees’ could just be marketing trick
  • Third party uptime measures are valuable resources
  • Forums, although good sources of information, may not necessarily be ‘accurate,’ particularly when it comes to host recommendations
  • To prevent downtimes, find providers that offer hosting on two separate machines and whose servers have automatic switchable mechanisms

Posted under Webhosting

This post was written by admin on June 17, 2009

Tags: , , , , , , ,