Class C IP Addresses are supposedly favored by search engine bots. Class C IP addresses is the basis of SEO hosting and thus is recommended in all cases. This specific type of IP address allows for the search engine bot to discover a large number of diverse inbound links entering your site increasing your ranking. Having a dedicated IP address will give your site and keywords a little bump up to the top opposed to your competitors.
The main benefit to having a class C IP address is its security. By having a dedicated IP address, other websites will not cause your site to go down. Since shared IPs is likely to have illegal sites or spammers, they may cause you a lot of downtime. With shared hosting a search engine and the government will take down the whole server not just the corrupt, leaving you in the dark, literally. Of course just having SEO hosting will not increase your ranking but it will help an already successful strategy. The money you will spend now on having a secured IP address will save you money down the road; imagine stopping downtime and crashes before they happen. Save you, your company, your website, and customers from downtime and think of switching to a dedicated IP address.