Is It Worth Buying SEO Hosting?

Hostgator has recently set up a new arm, SEO Hosting.

It specialises in a small but growing niche: hosting across multiple Class C IP addresses.

It joins a few other companies in this market, including SEOWebHosting.net and Got Web Host?.

But is SEO hosting worth buying anyway?

What is a Class C Network?

To understand SEO hosting, we need to understand Class C networks first.

An IP address is similar to a postal address on the web. It’s a series of numbers, each between 0 and 255. For example, the IP address of this site is 207.58.130.153.

Each of the numbers is assigned a letter, a, b, c and d respectively. A Class C network means that the first three numbers of the IP address are the same. For example, 207.58.130.238 is part of the same Class C network as this site.

Typically, when you get multiple IP address for a VPS, reseller or other higher-end hosting account, the numbers are sequential: not just on the same Class C network, but adjacent to one another.

This is apparently a cause for concern in SEO.

The Theory Behind SEO Hosting

If your sites are assigned sequential IPs, Google can tell that your websites are connected, apparently devaluing the links between them. By securing IP addresses across different Class C networks, SEO web hosts try to disguise the fact that its customers’ various sites are related.

Sometimes, different IP addresses are given different nameservers, also on different Class Cs.

Some even offer IP addresses on separate Class B networks.

Is SEO Hosting Worthwhile?

SEO analysis believe that Google devalues links from the same Class C networks. But SEO hosting might not be the answer.

Linking between a small set of sites is unlikely to offer much benefit anyway, so SEO hosting is really very limited in what it can offer.

And SEO hosting is, after all, a method of tricking Google. At best, it’s not something that the company likes to see happening. At worst, it could make Google think you’re a spammer.

Organic link building is the best way to improve SEO, and good content is always going to win out over any hosting tricks. You can compare SEO hosting plans using our handy host comparison tool.