Many SEO professionals do not understand why the pros always have an advantage. No matter how many links, how many landing pages, they just never hit the top of the Search Engine Results Pages. The truth is, the pros have a few advantages.

Search Engine Optimized Code

Webmasters will take the time to clean up their code so they can rank high on MSN. They don’t realize that clean code is not enough. To rank high and have your site look like it was made by a pro, the site must be W3C validated .

It is not hard. Just put your URL into the W3C validate test tool, and then fix the mistakes it finds. This alone will not guarantee that your site will stand out among the rest, but it is a fundamental. There will always be poorly-coded websites at the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). However, the ones that stay are the top follow the rules.

IP Address

An Internet Protocol (IP) address is the numerical identification (address) assigned to devices utilizing the Internet Protocol for communication. The short answer. The IP address is like your home mailbox.

Websites that have their own IP address will see a marked improvement in their search engine ranking. Many SEO round tables and forums have come to the conclusion that a private IP address is not necessary to hitting the top page of the Search Engine Results. That said, the conversation usually becomes more complicated discussing C-Class servers and their impact.

Do you want to consistently hit the top of the SERPs? If so, then you need to abandon your shared IP address for a dedicated one. Consider these stats provided to us by Bruce Clay, inc.:

“It’s been said that about 3 percent of all Web sites have dedicated IPs, with the other 97 percent resting on shared IPs. Research was then conducted analyzing the top 50 results for certain queries in the various search engines. The research found that 90 percent of the top-50 results were using dedicated IP numbers.

Three percent of Web sites use dedicated IP addresses, and 90% of Web sites in the top 50 SERPs results have them. As usual, the statistics speak for themselves.

One reason a dedicated IP address is important relates to speed. A shared IP address loads slower. The crawlers do not want to overload a system or use too much CPU server load, so they will only ‘sample’ the website that is on a shared IP address.

C-Class Servers

There is a new type of hosting company, SEO hosting. This takes advantage of the C-Class servers. Each website in the hosting plan has its own IP address. It also looks like it is on its own server, even if it is run from the same server, through a Cpanel.

This type of hosting is more expensive than regular hosting, but less expensive than a dedicated server. Here are some samples: http://www.seohosting.com/hosting-plans.php

Now, here is where the SEO aspect comes in. The use of multiple C-Class servers is only necessary when:

a) The sites are linking together
b) The sites share a common community, ie a forum.
c) The content is duplicated between the websites.

There are many ways around this. The main one is to keep your SEO efforts pure. Do not force your websites to do double duty as link building campaign tools by linking from one website to the next. Keep all links ‘offsite.’ There is no evidence that search engines penalize websites that have links coming from the same C class, but there is no advantage either.

What is C class IP? If you see any IP address divided in to 4 parts - AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD. Third section is the Class IP. Here is a good C Class validation tool .

I was chatting with a representative at Hostgator who honestly told me that ‘if you don’t understand how to make the most of an SEO hosting site, you should probably stick with a reseller’s hosting plan.’

Keep in mind, that SEO companies also have software programs sorting out the algorithms, run continual campaigns, and manage their own traffic networks. All of this helps increase the website ranking, but this doesn’t mean you cannot use some of their tricks to hit the top of the SERPs.