I understand that one-way links are considered more valuable to Google that reciprocal links.

Linkbuilder

Why my sites were banned:

Here's a post to my blog - as I wrote it when it happened...

<<URL SNIPPED>>

Note - after months of detailed entries I realized this blog cannot be crawled by the search engines... nevermind the fact that this site is banned - rofl. Sometimes the best laid plans... As we speak, this site is being re-created using a wordpress blog format - an outstanding tool for all bloggers)


Llinkbuilder

Links from the same IP address are worthless? What about all the sites hosted on blogger and similar. Are links between those worthless too, because they are all on the same IP address? I really don't know, I am just asking. It seems that would be a good reason to NOT use one of the major online blog systems.

Google loves sites hosted with dedicated or static ip addresses and rewards them. I personally experienced this and got a boost of PR2 for my domain.

Here's the deal. Google keeps track of IPs of sites in its engine. Sites with the same IP are typically on the same server. If this is a shared server, the sites might not have a lot in common other than using the same hosting company. But if this is a dedicated server, especially if the sites link to each other, Google assumes they are run by the same person and part of the same network. Therefore, a backlink doesn't count as much as it ordinarily might - it counts more like a backlink from one page of the same site to another.

The problem is that the search engines don't know whether an IP is to a shared or dedicated server. This can be a problem when another site that might be hosted on the same IP as you does some black hat SEO or something to get it banned. It's very possible that your site might also inadvertently get banned.

Hence why it's a good thing to have your own IP