Recommended Hosting Options You Guys Use When Going for Multiple Hosting Plans?

I'm starting to consider hosting new domains on different hosting plans individually while protecting myself with WHOIS Guard so that I can get more out of linking from one of my domains to another.

I take it I should never get any hosting plan which lets you host more than one site on your account because basically I want to keep all of my sites separated, yes? Or does it not matter if I have no intentions of linking the two sites I have on the same hosting account? So if I have 4 sites, 2 about nutrition and another 2 about cars and I'm only going to be linking the nutrition to the nutrition and cars to cars, it would be okay to put one nutrition and one car on one hosting plan and the other nutrition and other car on a different hosting plan (meaning 2 hosting plans)... OR do I need to get 4 separate hosting accounts for this?

And back to my original question, whom do you recommend? I found a coupon code for Host Gator for 30% off so with the hatching plan (just one domain) it's about $4 a month.

And finally, do I need to use multiple hosting providers, or can I just have multiple purchases/accounts on the same provider and that's fine?

This is due to SEO so keep that in mind. Thanks so much.

Myself I use multiple hosting providers so they will be as separated as possible. There are some threads about cheap hosting providers here on BHW you should search for that will give you a multitude of hosts to go with that won't break the bank. Also there are coupons for hostgator that will give you first month for 1 penny, but if the 30% is ongoing that would probably be better.

edit: also webhostingtalk usually has coupons for places that are pretty good. You might check there before clicking the purchase button on any you pick.

Great info, thanks for the reply.