I have quite a few niche websites, mainly as add-on domains on a shared server. I have accounts at a couple of different web hosts. Some of these sites are WordPress blogs while others are HTML sites. I intend to start developing a few of these sites into authority sites. Should I be thinking about a dedicated server before I do the authority sites, or should I leave everything as is and set up all future sites on a dedicated server?

Hi Woody,

Can you please clarify on what an "authority" website is? I may be one of the few that don't know but I would just appreciate your clarification.

Also, with having a Dedicated Server you will see an enhancement in performance. It may be the network your on, the larger storage options, and of course the freedom of control with having the option to upgrade at any time.

In all honesty, I would recommend getting a smaller based VPS until you start receiving thousand upon thousand of hits and require more allocation. That's just a suggestion, and you can always upgrade in the future.

No use in paying for something you won't use for the first few months.

- Tanner

Like Tanner said, this depends on what you mean by authority sites. Generally, what you're talking about could be hosted on a VPS.

From an SEO point of view, if you're looking at building authority sites, it's best NOT to have them on a single server (dedicated, vps etc), and for that matter, keeping them in different Class C's and potentially different datacenters will only help boost the authority value if you're cross linking between sites.

The definitions of Authority Sites changes from time to time, but the standard is that the site is an authority on a subject. The more the authority, the higher their weight plays in an SEO role, link role and advertising income role. The higher the authority, the more money you make (usually).

I would say when your VPS host tells you to find a dedicated server. Generally when your I/O gets too high, or cpu usage, memory usage, bandwidth, etc. At some point it becomes more cost effective to just buy a dedicated server.

I would prefer to host on different shared hosting plans. Unless you get a pretty bad service provider, shared server is always more powerful.

IMO you should calculate the approximate resources consumed by all of your websites and check out either a VPS hosting account can fulfill all of those or not, If you found a vps account as sufficient then this will save a lot of hosting expenses compared to dedicated server hosting.