OK, so one of the questions to pop up at this point is that of IP. I'm not 100% sure yet, but it appears that TypePad is completely a hosted solution. I believe, but again am not 100% sure, that Blogger lets you FTP the published files into any website, making it only a semi-hosted solution if you want to use it that way, giving you a unique IP. Why does this matter when thinking about IPs? Because if it's hosted-only, then you're almost certainly not going to get a unique IP. I can't imagine TypePad giving out an IP to everyone who signs up for one of these trial accounts. So, my suspicion is that you are stuck on an IP, grouped with countless other blogs, even if you use the Domain Mapping solution. While not a deal-breaker in SEO, it is better to have your own unique IP so that if someday the search engineers decide to penalize the great unwashed masses of bloggers based on their IPs, you would be immune.
To test this, I'm checking out the blog of one of my staff members, Jessica Ek. She when through the TypePad experience a few months ago. So, I'm firing up a DOS window, and using NSLookup.exe to do the test...
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.C:\Documents and Settings\Me>nslookup www.jessicaek.com
Server: ns1.connors.com
Address: 63.145.211.2Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.jessicaek.com
Address: 66.151.149.10C:\Documents and Settings\Me>nslookup seoandthecity.typepad.com
Server: ns1.connors.com
Address: 63.145.211.2Non-authoritative answer:
Name: seoandthecity.typepad.com
Address: 66.151.149.10C:\Documents and Settings\Me>
And there's the answer. At least at first glance, it appears we're all planted on the same IP. From what I know at this point, you might actually be able to purchase a unique IP from TypePad, but I will have to do further investigation, if I decide it's really that important. As I said, it's not the deal breaker in SEO.
Comments