Need advice-how to handle IP's on dedicated server

I've hosted at Hostgator for 5 years and always been pleased with their service. I just upgraded from a resellers account to a dedicated server. Although I saw cheaper options for dedicated servers, I have no experience in managing this type of account and felt I needed the level of support Hostgator offers.

I upgraded from reseller to dedicated server because I run 40 wordpress sites, each with 30 or more plugins. Hostgator advised me that the CPU usage I required was only available through a dedicated server.

I have only a handful of clients and I handle all their sites myself, so initially I have no reason to partition the server or set up reseller accounts. The server is set up for my use alone, with each site having its own c-panel.

Because each of my clients have several satellite sites whose purpose is to drive traffic to their main site, a coach advised me to set up each site's c-panel with its own IP address so that search engines would not see these sites are all on the same server.

My control panel for the dedicated server (WHM) has a menu titled "IP Functions>Add a new IP address". And Hostgator's description of their dedicated servers states " Dedicated owners have the potential for unlimited IPs; no need to create the cPanel first. Dedicated owners get 5 dedicated IPs included with your server, so be sure to use those first." I was therefore under the impression that I could get a separate IP address for each c-panel, as I had been advised to do.

However, after calling tech support at Hostgator 3 times today, I have been told 3 times that despite being told a dedicated server has the potential for unlimited IP's, I cannot actually add any new IP's . I have been told that IP addresses are in short supply, and that the only way to get a new IP address is if
(1) I have already used SSL on the 5 dedicated IPs that came with the server, and
(2) I can show that I need another SSL, and hence another IP. I would then be charged $8 per month for a block of 4 new IP's.

I don't need SSL, so I can't meet their requirements. Now I'm feeling cheated. I went from a $29 a month hosting plan to a $179. a month hosting plan and still can't accomplish one of my two main goals, which was keeping search engines from seeing these sites are hosted on the same server. (My other goal was to have enough CPU available to handle the numerous plugins used by the sites.)

My questions:
1)The tech support people I spoke with seemed as unknowledgeable about IP's as I am, so I'm not sure I believe their assertion that I can't get any more. Is what they told me the truth?

2) If I can't get more IP's, and hence can't give a different IP to each c-panel, is there some other way I can set this up to obscure the fact that all 40 sites are on the same server? I do have 5 IP's available, and can assign any site to any IP. However, one client has 15 sites, all on a related topic. No matter how I assign the IP's, there will always be 3 sites sharing each one of the IP's.