Thread: IP addresses & SEO for Google

Hi, hopefully somebody will have an answer to this.....
Question: we are looking to roll out approx 30 property websites all with same design template but each with their own unique content. We are targeting the Irish market and so all are going to be .ie for Google Ireland. All websites will be hosted in Ireland on same server. Should we host each website, each with a unique ip address or all on one ip? Reason I as is that we dont want Google to think it is some sort of spam network and if we host them on seperate ips we dont want Google thinking we are hiding a spam networ either!
So does anyone have any advice they can share on this?

Thanks!

If the content is different you should be fine.

Google is a search engine, so it can't see what the sites actually look like

Hi Blacknight,

Thanks for that. So do you think we should have seperate ip addresses anyway? Appreciate you thoughts and opinion!

You can't really justify separate IPs unless you are running services that require their own IP, such as SSL certs.

Can you provide more info on what exactly the 30 sites are for?

I am going to assume they are for the different counties. In this case, I'd stay on the same domain and the same IP. Why exactly do you want to use 30 different IPs? WHO told you that was the best approach?

If you want a spam network not to look like a spam network make sure there's no interlinking....

Thanks for responses. Reason for different domains is that cannot compete on adwords budget so need to compete on seo. these domains are keyword rich which is a good start. i hear having seperate ip addresses will give better score?

Originally Posted by swantlers

Thanks for responses. Reason for different domains is that cannot compete on adwords budget so need to compete on seo.

Whoa! First of all, if your competitors can afford to compete in PPC, you can too. You just need to be smart about it.

Originally Posted by swantlers

these domains are keyword rich which is a good start. i hear having seperate ip addresses will give better score?

Having 30 separate domains means you'll have to put in 30 times the amount of work to get them to rank. (Backlinks, content, linkbait etc) you're going to have a MUCH harder time than using a single domain.

The least of my worries would be unique IPs at this stage.

Hi Redfly,

We already have the content for each country. In terms of back links, I see them becoming less important in google algorithm in long run due to such activities such as link baiting etc. Anyhow, a good website and unique product offering will generate these links. Especially with keyword rich domains. As for PPC, well there are ways and tricks to compete with multi-nationals but thats via long tail/mispelled keywords. As you now know you can bid on a trademark.

At then end of the day, my original question was whether it is good to have seperate ip addresses from a google perspective? There will be little or no interlinking. Only with with regard to terms and conditions, contact us, about us page and privacy policy. What do you guys think?

Originally Posted by swantlers

What do you guys think?

From limited info available I think you need to go back and rethink your entire strategy.

The original question is a bit mute TBH - if you use the same templates for each site (along with shared utility pages) then Google will likely see that footprint. If you want to be safe with this follow one rule - put your users first.