I decided to try out using a dedicated IP with my reseller account and I wanted to offer some thoughts on this process.
Why Would I Want a New IP?
Most of the reasons for using a dedicated IP address revolve around SEO. First, it is argued by some that search engines will rank sites higher when they have an IP address that is not used by any other website. For example, if you are using a shared hosting account, the IP address of your site will actually be used by many websites. There is a theory that if your site is the only site using that IP address that you’ll receive SEO benefits from that. Most people do admit that if there is any benefit from this, it is going to be very small.
Another reason for a different IP address is so you can link between your own sites. If you own 20 websites and they all use the same (or a very similar) IP address search engines will recognize this when you link between those sites. This will reduces the amount of benefits you see from these links from a search engine point of view.
Why a Dedicated IP Address at HostGator Doesn’t Provide All This
I decided to get a dedicated IP address for this site, just to see how things worked. It is $2 a month so the risk vs reward seemed worth it. The process of getting a new IP address, which I’ll cover is a minute, is very simple.
However, what I found from my new dedicated IP address is that while is does guarantee I’m the only one using that IP address for my site, it does not affect two fairly important things:
- Email is still sent using your hosting IP address, which is shared. This means that if someone else using that IP address were blacklisted for spamming, your emails could also be blacklisted too. This isn’t really a very big problem and I wouldn’t worry about it but it is worth mentioning if someone were thinking of getting a dedicated IP for that reason.
- The IP address is very similar to your current IP address, at least in my case. This means that even though the IP address is different, the SEO gains will not be seen (according to other people’s educated guesses…SEO is a lot of guessing). To get more benefits you would want a new C-class IP address which will be very different from your current IP addresses.
Because of those two areas, I’m not entirely convinced that a dedicated IP address is worth it. If the dedicated IP addresses being provided were a different C-class, then I do think it would be worth it. HostGator does provide SEO hosting which includes several C-class addresses to use as you see fit but I’m not sure I really want (or need) to change my hosting plan. I will be contacting them soon to see if there is an option to have a new C-class IP address under the reseller plan.
How to Get a Dedicated IP
Getting a dedicated IP is pretty easy: just fill out this form if you are using a shared hosting account and this form for reseller accounts and the process will begin. On the reseller form, your “Reseller Domain” is the you main domain (the one you opened the account with) and “Site to Put On Dedicated IP” is just that, the site to give the IP address to. I mention this because the two domains can be different which I found confusing at first. After you fill out this form you’ll receive a few emails to confirm everything and then within a day or two you should have your dedicated IP address.
