How to Create SEO-Friendly URL Slugs

A URL slug is the part of a web address that identifies a specific page in human-readable form. In example.com/blog/chocolate-cake-recipe, the slug is chocolate-cake-recipe. Slugs affect search rankings, click-through rates from search results, and how shareable your links are on social media.

Google considers URL structure as a ranking signal. Pages with descriptive, keyword-rich slugs tend to outrank pages with auto-generated IDs like ?p=12345 or random strings. Users also prefer clicking on URLs they can read and understand before visiting the page. A well-crafted slug tells both search engines and humans exactly what the page contains.

Our Slug Generator converts any title, heading, or text into a clean URL slug instantly, handling accent removal, special character stripping, and multiple naming conventions. Use it to generate slugs for blog posts, product pages, API routes, and database records.

What Makes a Good URL Slug

Good slugs share five characteristics:

1. Lowercase only — URLs are case-sensitive on most servers. Mixed case creates duplicate content issues when Example-Page and example-page resolve to different URLs.
2. Hyphen-separated — Google treats hyphens as word separators but treats underscores as joiners. The slug bake-bread registers as two distinct words in the index, while bake_bread registers as one token.
3. Keyword-rich — The slug should contain your primary target keyword. chocolate-cake-recipe ranks better than post-march-15.
4. Concise — Under 60 characters is the recommended limit. Google truncates long URLs in search results, hiding the most descriptive part. Shorter URLs are also easier to share in emails and on social media where character limits apply.
5. ASCII-safe — No accented characters, emojis, or symbols that might break in older email clients or get percent-encoded into unreadable strings.

Common Slug Mistakes to Avoid

Including Stop Words

Stop words like “a”, “the”, “and”, “or”, “in”, “of”, and “to” add length without SEO value. Compare these:

With stop words	Without stop words
how-to-build-a-responsive-website-in-2025	build-responsive-website-2025
the-complete-guide-to-making-bread-at-home	complete-bread-making-guide

The shorter versions contain the same keywords in fewer characters, leaving room for more descriptive terms.

Using Dates or IDs

Slugs like 2025-03-15-my-post or post-12345 waste keyword space on non-descriptive information. If you want date-based organization, put the date in the URL path (/blog/2025/03/my-post) rather than the slug itself.

Changing Slugs After Publishing

Every backlink, social share, and bookmark points to the original URL. Changing a slug breaks all of those references. Search engines need to re-crawl and re-index the page, and any accumulated PageRank on the old URL is lost unless you set up a 301 redirect. Set slugs correctly before publishing.

Using Underscores Instead of Hyphens

This is one of the most common mistakes. Matt Cutts (former head of Google Webspam) confirmed that Google treats hyphens as word separators and underscores as word joiners. The slug web_design is indexed as the single token “web_design” rather than the two words “web” and “design”.

Slug Formats for Different Platforms

Different contexts require different naming conventions. The slug format you choose depends on where it will be used.

Format	Example	Best For
kebab-case	my-blog-post	URLs, CSS classes, file names
snake_case	my_blog_post	Python variables, database columns
camelCase	myBlogPost	JavaScript variables, TypeScript
PascalCase	MyBlogPost	Class names, React components
dot.case	my.blog.post	Java packages, config keys

For public-facing URLs, always use kebab-case. It’s the only format recommended by Google and the universal standard for web addresses.

Handling International Characters

Many languages use accented characters that aren’t safe in URLs. The standard approach is to strip diacritical marks while preserving the base letter:

Original	Slug
Café Résumé	cafe-resume
Über Cool Straße	uber-cool-strasse
El Niño Effect	el-nino-effect

This process is called Unicode normalization. The text is decomposed into base characters and combining marks (NFD form), then the combining marks (accents) are removed. The result is ASCII-safe text that preserves readability.

URL Length and Search Results

Google displays approximately 60-70 characters of a URL in search result snippets. Longer URLs get truncated with an ellipsis, hiding potentially descriptive keywords from users scanning results.

Research from Backlinko analyzing 11.8 million Google search results found that shorter URLs tend to rank higher than longer ones. The average URL length of a page ranking in position 1 was significantly shorter than pages in positions 9-10.

Keep slugs focused on your primary keyword and trim unnecessary words. The slug should describe the page content in as few words as possible.

Slug Generation Workflow

A practical workflow for creating slugs:

1. Start with the page title — Use your headline as the starting point
2. Remove stop words — Strip “a”, “the”, “and”, “or”, “in”, “to”, “of”
3. Remove special characters — Strip punctuation, symbols, and emojis
4. Convert accented characters — Replace diacritics with ASCII equivalents
5. Lowercase everything — Avoid case-sensitivity issues
6. Replace spaces with hyphens — Use single hyphens only, no double hyphens
7. Check length — Trim to under 60 characters at a word boundary
8. Verify uniqueness — Ensure no other page on your site has the same slug

The Slug Generator handles steps 2-7 automatically. Paste your title and get a clean slug in any format you need.

CMS-Specific Slug Tips

WordPress

WordPress auto-generates slugs from titles but includes stop words. Edit the permalink field manually before publishing. Go to Settings → Permalinks and select “Post name” structure for clean URLs.

Shopify

Product slugs are generated from the product title. Edit them under the “Search engine listing preview” section. Shopify doesn’t allow bulk slug editing natively, so set them correctly on creation.

Ghost and Static Site Generators

Most static site generators (Hugo, Jekyll, Eleventy, Astro) derive slugs from the filename or a frontmatter field. Name your files with the desired slug: build-responsive-website.md generates the slug build-responsive-website.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do URL slugs affect SEO rankings?

Yes. Google uses URL structure as a ranking signal. Descriptive, keyword-rich slugs help search engines understand the page topic. They also improve click-through rates because users can see what the page is about before clicking. The SEO impact is modest compared to content quality and backlinks, but it’s a confirmed factor.

Should I include numbers in URL slugs?

Include numbers when they add value. “10-tips” or “2025-guide” helps users understand the content. Avoid arbitrary numbers like database IDs that mean nothing to readers. If the number might change (like “top-10” becoming “top-12”), consider leaving it out to avoid needing a slug change.

How do I redirect an old slug to a new one?

Use a 301 (permanent) redirect. In Apache, add a rule to .htaccess. In Nginx, add a rewrite directive. In Cloudflare, use Page Rules or redirect rules. A 301 tells search engines to transfer PageRank from the old URL to the new one. Avoid 302 (temporary) redirects for permanent slug changes.

What happens if two pages have the same slug?

Most CMS platforms append a number to avoid collisions (e.g., my-post-2). This is ugly and confusing. Prevent it by checking for existing slugs before publishing. Each slug should be unique within its URL path.

Can URL slugs contain special characters?

Technically, URLs can contain percent-encoded special characters (%20 for space, %C3%A9 for é). However, these are difficult to read and share. Best practice is to use only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. Remove all other characters during slug generation.