How important is it to have a dedicated IP for my website. My site is currently on a shared IP which is shared with about 10 other sites. Does this cause a lot of harm to the SEO efforts I am making? Also what effect would it had if the IP is changed? My problem is that I do not want to get a dedicated IP now and then have to upgrade to a dedicated server later which would change the IP of the site. Decisions Decisions....
Really? And what "proof" do you have to back this up? Probably 99% of the websites on the internet are on shared hosting. And they rank just fine. Your IP address generally has no bearing on rankings other than for geotargetting. Changing IPs at a later date should also have absolutely no bearing on rankings... It happens every day. The search engines know this is a VERY common occurence. The ONLY thing having a dedicated IP does is that in some rare occurences it prevents you from being penalized inadvertantly should Google find some huge link farm (literally hundreds of interlinked web sites owned by the same company/individual) on your shared server and they decide it's easier just to penalize the entire IP rather than the offending sites individually. Even then, once you figure out your site was penalized, you can submit a Reconsideration Request... and after a manual review, assuming you are NOT violating their guidelines, they'll lift the penatly. A dedicated IP prevents you from dealing with the hassle should you get caught up in such a situation. Don't get me wrong... I always advocate using a dedicated IP. $2-3 per month extra NOT to have to deal with the headaches of such a penalty from "guilt by association" is well worth it, especially if you depend on your site to make money some how.
Depends on your sites, a bad apple with many other everyday sites on a shared IP certainly catches less attention than on it's own IP. I yet have to see a shared IP with dozens of different customers getting a penalty, but I have seen loads of dedicated IP sites getting beaten down by Google... This doesn't mean you should have all your sites in one hosting account or IP, it just means that having an IP of it's own noone else uses for every site isn't necessary.