I know the difference between dedicated and shared ip. I'm just curious whether its a good idea to get an dedicated one instead of a shared one in terms of SEO. Because, If i wanted to link my site together like a 3 way link exchange to increase PR, wouldn't a shared ip be detected and recieve a penalty for that? Thanks for your comments.
Logically it would make sense to have a dedicated ip for each site so it benefits in terms of SEO. However it is not the case, and I have not seen any contrary indication. But, I dont think shared ip's can give you a penalty. Let say, you host your site with an hosting company that targets a niche market. For example, bonsai. Well they may have alot of bonsai site on the same ip's. Another bonsai site could link to your bonsai site, even if you didnt ask, and you dont even know the owner. Now, would it make sense to get penalised for this ? That is why I dont think you can get penalised for this and you gain no real advantage of hosting on a different ip, even another c class ip. This is my opinion, some say different. Some hosting company even sell SEO hosting with a 20 different ip's package.
There are alot of opinions about that but mine is that if you are going to do a 3-way, than you need at least one of them out of the IP loop but of course if they were all seperate than it would be better! There are several people that say that it doesn't matter and I have seen 3-ways that work on the same IP but I have never seen one above a PR3!! Usually your host will sell you a dedicated IP for like 1-2 dollars per month on YOUR server, you might want to ask them!! Even on a shared! Or you might get a package with a dedicated to where they give you so many IPs. They can do that!! I hope that helps!
PR value is not just based on the pure number of links. It has a lot to do with the quality and relevancy of the links. I don't believe the dedicated or shared IP will make a huge difference in your case. If the sites you are linking are highly relevant and have unique content, the IP address shouldn't be a big factor. On the other hand, if the links have low relevancy, dedicated IP is not the answer.