Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Multiple Domains on 1 IP Address
-
We have multiple domains on the same C Block IP Address. Our main site is an eCommerce site, and we have separate domains for each of the following: our company blog (and other niche blogs), forum site, articles site and corporate site. They are all on the same server and hosted by the same web-hosting company.
They all have unique and different content. Speaking strictly from a technical standpoint, could this be hurting us? Can you please make a recommendation for the best practices when it comes to multiple domains like these and having separate or the same IP Addresses?
Thank you!
-
Sorry, I'm confused about the setup. Hosts routinely run multiple sites off of shared IPs, but each domain name resolves as itself. Users and search bots should never see that redirection at all and shouldn't be crawling the IPs. This isn't an SEO issue so much as a setup issue. Likewise, any rel=canonical tags on each site would be tied to that site's specific domain name.
-
Hello Peter,
We have three sites hosted on the same server with the same IP address. For SEO (to avoid duplicate content) reasons we need to redirect the IP address to the site - but there are three different sites. If we use the "rel canonical" code on the websites, these codes will be duplicates too, as the websites are mirrored versions of the sites with IP address, e.g. www.domainname.com/product-page and 23.34.45.99/product-page. What's the best ways to solve these duplicate content issues in this case? Many thanks!
-
I think that situation's a bit different - if you aren't interlinking and the sites are very different (your site vs. customer sites), there's no harm in shared hosting. If you share the IP and one site is hit with a severe penalty, there's a small chance of bleedover, but we don't even see that much these days. Now that we're running out of IPv4 addresses, shared IPs are a lot more common (by necessity).
-
I have something similar. I'm with Hostgator, I have a VPS level 5. It comes with 4 IP address's and I have about 15 sites, some mine, some customer sites spread out over the addresses. There is very little interlinking between the sites but I was concerned too. I have read that Add-on sites are bad for SEO, but as long as you arent feature building crappy sites and linking them to your main site, should be fine.
-
I think @cgman and @Nakul are both right, to a point. Technically, it's fine. Google doesn't penalize shared IPs (they're fairly common). If you're cross-linking your sites, though, it's very likely Google will devalue those links. That tactic has just been abused too much, and a shared IP is a dead giveaway.
Now, is it worth splitting all these out to gain a little more link-juice? In most cases, probably not. Google knows you own the sites, and may devalue them anyway. Chances are, they've already been devalued a bit. So, I don't think it's worth hours and hours and thousands of dollars to give them all their own homes, in most cases (it is highly situational, though).
The only other potential problem is if one site were penalized - there have been cases where that impacted sites on the same IP, especially cross-linked sites. It's not common, and you may not be at any risk, but it's not unheard of. As @Nakul said, it's a risk calculation.
-
I am presuming all those domains are linking to each other, correct ?
Are they regular or nofollow links ? It boils down how much authority you have on your main domain as well as the other domains. If I were you, I will keep the main e-commerce website on one server and everything else including niche blogs etc on a different server. It's not just SEO, but also security issues.
Essentially, to answer your question, it may not be hurting you to have the niche blogs, a forum with user generated content, the articles site and the corporate site on the same IP/server, but it would help you a lot more if they were on a different server, possibly different Class C IPs. So, you will gain from these links being on a different server. Keep in mind, these links are important for you and its good to increase their value by hosting them separately, because these sites are links that your competition can never get linked from. I would also consider doing a nofollow on them, and that's just my thoughts. I prefer lower risk. Again, it depends on what your e-commerce website's link profile is.
-
There is nothing wrong with having multiple sites / blogs on the same C block IP address. However, if you're trying to use your blogs to link to your products to boost SEO scores then you might want to consider other link building techniques in addition. Building backlinks from sites on same IP is okay, but you'll have greater benefits getting links from sites hosted on other servers.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirect multiple domains to 1 domain or not?
Hi there, I have client who has multiple domains that already have some PA and DA. Problem is that most websites have the same content and rank better on different keywords.
Technical SEO | | Leaf-a-mark
I want to redirect all the websites to 1 domain because it’s easier to manage and it removes any duplicate content. Question is if I redirect domain x to domain y do the rankings of domain x increase on domain y? Or is it better to keep domain x separately to generate more referral traffic to domain y? Thanks in advance! Cheers0 -
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog.
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog. This was done with the purpose of gaining backlinks to our main website as well along with to our blog. This set us very low in organic traffic and not to mention, lost the backlinks. For anything, they are being redirected to 301 code. Kindly suggest changes to bring back all the traffic.
Technical SEO | | arun.negi0 -
I have a GoDaddy website and have multiple homepages
I have GoDaddy website builder and a new website http://ecuadorvisapros.com and I notices through your crawl test that there are 3 home pages http://ecuadorvisapros with a 302 temporary redirect, http://www.ecuadorvisapros.com/ with no redirect and http://www.ecuadorvisapros/home.html. GoDaddy says there is only one home page. Is this going to kill my chances of having a successful website and can this be fixed? Or can it. I actually went with the SEO version thinking it would be better, but it wants to auto change my settings that I worked so hard at with your sites help. Please keep it simple, I am a novice although I have had websites in the past I know more about the what's than the how's of websites. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | ScottR.0 -
Handling Multiple Restaurants Under One Domain
We are working with a client that has 2 different restaurants. One has been established since 1938, the other was opened in late 2012. Currently, each site has its own domain name. From a marketing/branding perspective, we would like to make the customers [web visitors] of the established restaurant aware of the sister restaurant. To accomplish this, we are thinking about creating a landing page that links to each restaurant. To do this, we would need to purchase a brand new URL, and then place each restaurant in a separate sub folder of the new URL. The other thought is to have each site accessed from the main new URL [within sub folders] and also point each existing URL to the appropriate sub folder for each restaurant. We know there are some branding and marketing hurdles with this approach that we need to think through/work out. But, we are not sure how this would impact their SEO––and assume it will not be good. Any thoughts on this topic would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | thinkcreativegroup0 -
How to do ip canonicalization ?
Hi , my website is opening with IP too. i think its duplicate content for google...only home page is opening with ip, no other pages, how can i fix it?, might be using .htaccess i am able to do...but don't know proper code for this...this website is on wordpress platform... Thanks Ramesh
Technical SEO | | unibiz0 -
How much will changing IP addresses impact SEO?
So my company is upgrading its Internet bandwidth. However, apparently the vendor has said that part of the upgrade will involve changing our IP address. I've found two links that indicate some care needs to be taken to make sure our SEO isn't harmed: http://followmattcutts.com/2011/07/21/protect-your-seo-when-changing-ip-address-and-server/ http://www.v7n.com/forums/google-forum/275513-changing-ip-affect-seo.html Assuming we don't use an IP address that has been blacklisted by Google for spamming or other black hat tactics, how problematic is it? (Note: The site hasn't really been aggressively optimized yet - I started with the company less than two weeks ago, and just barely got FTP and CMS access yesterday - so honestly I'm not too worried about really messing up the site's optimization, since there isn't a lot to really break.)
Technical SEO | | ufmedia0 -
Any way around buying hosting for an old domain to 301 redirect to a new domain?
Howdy. I have just read this QA thread, so I think I have my answer. But I'm going to ask anyway! Basically DomainA.com is being retired, and DomainB.com is going to be launched. We're going to have to redirect numerous URLs from DomainA.com to DomainB.com. I think the way to go about this is to continue paying for hosting for DomainA.com, serving a .htaccess from that hosting account, and then hosting DomainB.com separately. Anybody know of a way to avoid paying for hosting a .htaccess file on DomainA.com? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SamTurri0 -
Websites on same c class IP address
If two websites are on the same c class IP address, what does it mean ? Does two websites belong to the same company ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050