Why Using Separate Web Hosts May Be A Good Idea

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

If you manage multiple websites you probably want to host them at different hosting companies. The reason is because you can get more mileage out of cross-linking them. This is especialy true if they serve the same niche, but even if they don’t serve the same niche you can still cross-link them and get more out of your links.

The search engines, especially Google, recognize that sites existing on the same IP block are related, at least to a certain degree. Even if the sites on the same IP block are not related in subject matter or ownership, the search engines may treat them like they are and ignore links from them. There is an assumption that if two sites are on the same IP block and one them links to the other then those sites are owned by the same person.

To prevent any type of degrading of your links, put your sites on separate IP blocks by using different hosts for them or using dedicated servers for them. The better solution is to use different hosts because even dedicated servers with the same web host could trigger similar IP addresses due to geographic proximity. Some search engine optimization experts go so far as to host their websites in different countries. That’s not a bad idea.