Is web hosting with dedicated IP address better than shared IP address?

Shared IP vs dedicated IP… Do I need dedicated IP for my blogs? That’s the question that I asked on July 2009. And I got myself a dedicated IP in the end. Thought of lot of things back then. SEO, traffic, search engine ranking were the factors that I made the purchase. Does it really help in SEO on improving my blogs traffic?

What is a dedicated IP?
You will get 1 unique IP number for your web hosting account – your primary domain. For my case, 70.40.213.222 is the dedicated IP that I own. When you type 70.40.213.222 into your web browsers address bar, it will route you to the main domain which is JayceOoi.com.

What is a shared IP?
Most of the websites have shared IP addresses. Depend on web hosting provider, 200 to 300 websites sharing the same 1 IP in shared web hosting package is normal. Some have less than 100 websites sharing 1 IP.

Who need a dedicated IP? What benefit does dedicated IP bring?

  • Having your own Private SSL Certificate.
  • Anonymous FTP.
  • Access your website with IP even when the domain name is inaccessible.

Okay, there is lot of myths about dedicated IP on SEO. Some said it did improve Google PageRank and search engine ranking while some denied. I saw some blogs which rank higher in Google does have dedicated IP when I purchased it last year. It is just USD 2.50 per month for dedicated IP. Can’t you earn that back with your blogs? I asked myself. After using dedicated IP for more than 6 months, does my blog traffic increased? YES. But I did lot of other SEO optimizations too. So does dedicated IP really help? I don’t know…

Will you purchase dedicated IP for your blog?