I need some advice

I'm not really clued up on hosting with regards to SEO and would like if someone could give me some guidance.

I currently have my site running on a virtual server and was wondering, if I produce another site, can I have it running on the same virtual server without being penalised by the search engines.

To do this I would create a new directory on the server with no links from the original site to the new one. I would then purchase a domain name and direct it to look at the new site index page in the new directory.

Will the search engines treat it as a completely different site and spider it as they normally would?

Do they see it as two names pointing at the one site and penalise me for it.

I'd appreciate any help. I'm on a very tight budget but would like to produce a few small sites and run them on the one hosting package. It's just a hobby and don't want to spend a fortune.

This is a common way of doing things. It won't be a problem.

Yes, no problem as such from search engines perspective, but in some cases where the traffic to the site causes too much of a load on the server, you might need to switch to dedicated hosting. It's very rare though.

So I can have, say 10, different websites on the same virtual server with no problems? :-D

Sounds good to me.

As long as the server can handle the load, no problem. Most servers run 200 or so at a time.

Please note that when serveral sites are on a singel server, the preformance of all sites will suffer if you just have one site that are heavy on CPU use and disk access. You could assign seperate ip-adresses to each site if you like (if you are handeling secure transactions, it is a must.)

what are the specs for your server?

I'll have to check the server spec, however...

Completely daft question no. 2...

Does it matter if I buy my names from a different company than my server host when using the redirect thing?

I don't suppose it does but thought I'd better ask.

Thanks