I've heard if you have 1 site on 1 IP, that it would be better then having a bunch of sites on the same IP when it comes to SEO. Any truth to this? The thing is, i don't know if i want to spend 150/month for a dedicated box when the site is going to be new and not generating anywhere near that in the beginnig. Do sites get penalized or treated poorly when they are on virtual hosting packages with many other people on the same block of ips? or is it completely fine to start off with a virtual hosting package and then move onto a dedicated server once the traffic and revenue warrant an investment into a dedicated server? Thanks in advance.
The bulk of websites are on a shared hosting environment, and Google would know and understand this. In my experience it makes no difference, i've had sites on shared and moved them to dedicated with no difference in SERPs and vice versa. However it is good to have your own IP for other reasons, and alot of hosts can provide them for a few dollars a month.
If there's any SEO boost in having a dedicated server, I would think it would be negligible unless other people on your server were building lots of blackhat spam sites and the SEs thought your sites were just more blackhat sites.
I agree with sweetfunny. Matt Cutts commented about this a while back: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/myth-busting-virtual-hosts-vs-dedicated-ip-addresses/
Most of the sites on the web are on shared accounts. Get the site earning some money and then once it has outgrown the resources of the share host move it to its own box. You may want to think about this when choosing a hosting company. If you can have both at the same host then the move will be a lot easier when the time comes.
Thanks for the link, it confirms my own findings. I've been doing SEO for several years, but don't read much in the last couple of years prefering to go by past experience or things i proove myself and i know is fact. Another thing to consider in this equasion if a dedicated were in fact better, who's to say that IP wasn't used by a pump & dump Viagra site for the last 12 months? Really the main things that factors with a host is speed, uptime and good configuration.
If you're going to be building lots of sites, it makes sense to go with a dedicated box. I run over 100 websites on a dedicated server that costs me $107 per month (with about 50 different IP addresses). The average website owner is paying me about $10/month for hosting, with a few paying up to $100 per month for hosting, website management, bulk email addresses, etc. I guess it depends on your business model.