69.89.23.83

That’s today’s magic number, and the magic number for all clients of Shire Enterprises, Inc. That’s our Dedicated IP at Bluehost.com, our preferred host.

What’s an IP? Our friends at Wikipedia have put this together:

An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique address that certain electronic devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other on a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol standard (IP)—in simpler terms, a computer address. Any participating network device—including routers, computers, time-servers, printers, Internet fax machines, and some telephones—can have their own unique address.

An IP address can also be thought of as the equivalent of a street address or a phone number (compare: VoIP (voice over (the) internet protocol)) for a computer or other network device on the Internet. Just as each street address and phone number uniquely identifies a building or telephone, an IP address can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on a network. An IP address differs from other contact information, however, because the linkage of a user’s IP address to his/her name is not publicly available information.

A dedicated IP address is not shared by other domain names; it is unique to your domain name and your space on the server.

The benefits to our clients are many. Among these:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – For some reason, sites on a dedicate IP show do better in the search engines. There are quite a few things we do “behind the scenes” to make sure our web sites show up closer to the top of the rankings. For example, if you sell “widgets,” and who doesn’t, then what is to distinguish your site from any other if someone wants to buy “widgets” in your home town? So, someone goes to Google and does a query for, “Widgets in Park Forest.” A site that is properly optimized will show up before sites that are more poorly put together.
• Dedicated IP = Friendly IP: Many hosts allow so many sub-accounts on one IP , and some many be spammers. And an IP can get banned by various spam blockers because someone on that IP is unscrupulous, and if that happens to your IP, then your email (and all others on that IP) can get tagged by these organizations as Spam, and you then get your email blacklisted. It would be, if you have a small list of subscribers or depend on INCOME of a legitimate list. So your email would never be delivered.

These are just some of the ways we’re working to make Shire Enterprises the ultimate design and hosting experience for our customers.