SEO hosting: what it is, why the classic model stopped working and what to use instead

At a glance

• SEO hosting means hosting many websites on different IP addresses so they don’t look like they share an owner. It is sold mainly to people who run blog networks.
• Classic SEO hosts put your sites on blocks of IPs from their own servers, behind their own nameservers, which is a footprint search engines already know.
• IPs that differ only in the third block (the “C-class”) are a weak signal of independence at best, because the addresses still belong to one company.
• SEO hosting does nothing for a single website’s rankings, so a startup with one site doesn’t need it.
• What works now is each site on a unique IP at a large, real hosting company, using that company’s own nameservers, with no shared setup across the sites.

What SEO hosting is

The term also gets used loosely to mean “the best hosting for SEO” for a single site. That is a different question. For one site, hosting matters through speed and uptime, which we cover in how hosting affects SEO. The rest of this article is about the multi-site kind.

How classic SEO hosting works

The model that most SEO hosts still sell looks like this:

• The host owns or rents servers in one or a few data centers.
• It buys blocks of IP addresses and assigns one to each of your sites, advertising how many different “C-class” IPs you get.
• Your sites run on the host’s own servers, often each with a separate cPanel account.
• DNS runs through the host’s own nameservers, often custom ones set up for the service.

On paper every site has its own IP. In practice they share a hosting company, a network, a set of nameservers and often a control panel, and any of those can tie them together.

Why the classic model stopped being enough

We have hosted blog networks since 2014, and the weak points of classic SEO hosting are the same ones we see whenever a network gets found.

The IPs belong to one company. Every IP address is registered to an owner and announced by a network, identified by an Autonomous System Number (ASN). A hundred IPs from one SEO host’s ranges all trace back to the same small company, however different they look in the third block. Our ASN footprints article explains how that lookup works.

Custom nameservers are a harmful footprint. Our PBN guide is direct about this: “Avoid whatever calls itself SEO hosting as it’s the old way of doing things and only provides different IPs but only custom nameservers which are a big footprint.” If a set of nameservers is used only by one SEO host’s customers, every site behind them is grouped for anyone who checks. See nameserver footprints for the detail.

C-class diversity alone is weak. The guide classes “Hosting on only one provider or C-Block” as a neutral footprint: not enough on its own to get a network deindexed, but links from IPs that are the same or too close “can be discounted because Google expects links coming from a diverse range of IPs.” Our C-class IP hosting article covers what the term means, and A-class SEO hosting covers why diversity across the whole address matters.

Control panels leak. Many classic SEO hosts give each site a cPanel account. Our PBN guide warns that cPanel’s DNS SOA records usually include a “hostmaster” email, the one you signed up with, which ties every site on that account to you unless you change it. Multiply that by dozens of accounts and you have dozens of chances to miss one.

Bad neighborhoods. IP ranges that have hosted networks for years carry that history. If a host keeps selling IPs whose domains keep getting deindexed, new customers inherit the problem.

Search engines know how classic SEO hosting works. A setup designed to look diverse, built from one company’s resources, is easier to spot than ordinary websites spread across ordinary hosts.

What SEO hosting doesn’t do

SEO hosting doesn’t make a website rank better on its own. A single site on a special IP gets no ranking boost from it. Older articles, including some on this blog, claimed that search engines rank sites by the location of their IP address, or that spreading sites across countries improves local or international SEO. We have removed those claims. Hosting affects a single site through speed, uptime and security, and for most sites a good mainstream host covers that.

Is SEO hosting worth it?

The classic kind isn’t. Paying for C-class IPs on one company’s servers buys you a footprint, plus the work of managing many accounts.

The need it served is real, though. If you run a blog network, the sites must not look connected, and that takes hosting spread across many real providers. So the question is less “is SEO hosting worth it” and more “is your network hosting doing the job SEO hosting promised?”

Who needs it:

• Owners of private blog networks.
• Agencies that run networks of sites for clients.
• Anyone hosting a group of sites that link to each other or to the same money site.

Who doesn’t:

• A startup or small business with one website. You need a reliable mainstream host, and there is nothing to hide.
• A company running several brand sites openly. Shared ownership is fine when you aren’t using the sites for links. See whether it’s bad to host multiple sites on one host for that case.

What to look for instead

Whatever you call it, hosting for a network should give you:

• IPs owned by many different, real hosting companies, so ownership and ASN lookups lead to large providers.
• The hosting provider’s own nameservers, shared with thousands of ordinary sites, or a large public DNS provider.
• Variety across the A, B and C blocks of the address, including the first two parts.
• No shared footprint in the sites themselves: different themes, plugins and admin usernames, and no shared analytics or ad codes.
• An email address that works on every site, because a site with no email can stand out.
• Updates and backups handled, so one forgotten blog doesn’t get hacked and drag the rest into view.
• A way to move existing sites in without rebuilding them.

Our PBN guide’s test applies to all of it: think whether the setup would be natural for a legitimate blog. For more on what is and isn’t a real footprint, see PBN footprints.

Easy Blog Networks: what SEO hosting promised, without the classic setup

Easy Blog Networks isn’t an SEO host in the classic sense. Classic SEO hosts use their own IPs, servers and custom nameservers, which is the footprint that gets networks deindexed. EBN does the job SEO hosting promised by hosting every blog with brand-name hosting providers, on their IPs and their nameservers.

• Each blog gets a unique IP at a large hosting provider, such as Amazon Web Services, DigitalOcean, Linode, Rackspace or Vultr. The full list is on our providers page.
• Nameservers come from the hosting provider and are shared with its other customers. Where a provider has no nameservers of its own, we use popular DNS providers.
• You can use up to 500 unique IPs. All are in different A- or B-blocks, or at the very least non-sequential C-blocks. You can host more than 500 sites, but IPs then start repeating.
• Each blog is installed with WordPress (the only platform we host), a random theme, different plugins, randomized usernames and its own mailbox.
• SSL is enabled automatically, WordPress, theme and plugin updates run automatically, and backups are taken daily.
• We transfer existing blogs from any host for free.

Plans start at US$39/month for 10 blogs, excluding tax, with a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. See pricing or read more about how hosting on EBN works.

FAQ

Are C-class IPs enough?

No. IPs that differ only in the C-block usually belong to the same company and network, and search engines know about multi-IP SEO hosting. Diversity has to cover who owns the IPs and the nameservers as well as the numbers.

Can I host multiple sites on one IP?

You can. Shared hosting works that way for ordinary sites. For a blog network, putting several of your linking sites on one IP is the most obvious connection you can leave, so give each one its own IP at a different provider where you can.

Is SEO hosting the same as a VPS?

No. A VPS is a virtual server you rent and run yourself, usually with one IP. SEO hosting spreads many sites across many IPs. Running a network from your own VPS puts every site on one machine. See whether VPS hosting is bad for SEO.

Does hosting affect SEO for a normal site?

Yes, through speed, uptime and security. The IP address itself isn’t a ranking lever. For one site, choose a reliable mainstream host.