DNS is an important part of how we access the internet every day and stands for Domain Name System. The internet will be much harder to use and use without it, so just what is DNS exactly, and how does it work?
The Domain Name System is the internet's absolute legend. Without even understanding it many individuals depend on it every day. DNS makes web surfing open and easy to do for everyone.
Computers use strings of numbers called IP addresses to access the internet, which are as follows: 123.456.7.7. The problem is that we humans find numbers such as this difficult to recall, so we use domain names like www.example.com to search the site.
DNS converts domain names into IP addresses which can be interpreted by our web browsers. Without DNS, for the web sites that we want to access, we will all have to recall strings of numbers that would make surfing the internet quite a nightmare!
Translating human-friendly domain names into computer-friendly IP addresses is the primary function of DNS. So how does it do that exactly? You need to meet with the four DNS servers to properly understand the DNS lookup process.
You could think about them as members of an archive team working together to locate a single piece of information: these four servers each have their own role in the project.
For each server and their functions, here's a short run-down:
This is the first server in the search process. It has obtained the request and searches for the correct IP address for each server in turn.
The key purpose of this server is to guide the resolution name server in the right direction so that the proper TLD name server can be identified.
TLD is a top-level domain, essentially pointing to the .com part of the domain. There's going to be a .com TLD server, another .co.uk server, .org, .net, and etc.
This is the last server in the phase of DNS checking. This is the server which can send the correct IP address to the server that resolves the name.
It is necessary to keep each of the following elements in mind to optimise search engine-referred traffic:
Strive for quick, easy to recall, easy to type, and easy to say domain names. For phrase marketing, this is valuable since such travellers would need to specifically enter your domain, but for processing fluency, it also matters. The idea that we recall and make more favourable experiences for things that we can quickly articulate and easily care about and that involves pronounceability in our own heads is an unconscious cognitive bias, processing fluency. So, keep away from domain names that contain numbers or other non-standard characters, use odd spelling, or are longer than roughly 15 or so characters.
If there are two words in your domain name (like www.examplesite.com), you might want to distinguish the words with a readability hyphen: www.example-site.com. However, bear in mind that the use of hyphens often coincides closely with spam activity and reduces the readability and memorability of domain names. Generally, no more than one hyphen can be used for that purpose (if any must be used at all).
There are some important considerations to remember if a webmaster wants to switch from one domain to another, including setting up redirects on a page-to-page basis such that sub-folders and deep content pages are routed to the new domain's corresponding sub-folders and deep content pages. SEOs should prevent the redirection of all sites from one domain to another domain's homepage.