Slug Generator

The Complete Guide to URL Slugs and SEO-Friendly URLs

A URL slug is more than just the address of a page — it is a direct SEO signal that Google reads to understand your content. A well-crafted slug can meaningfully improve your search rankings, increase click-through rates from search results, and make your URLs shareable and memorable. Our free Slug Generator instantly converts any text, title, or heading into a clean, SEO-optimized URL slug.

What is a URL Slug?

The slug is the final part of a URL path that identifies a specific page. In:

https://example.com/blog/how-to-bake-sourdough-bread

The slug is how-to-bake-sourdough-bread. It describes the page content in human-readable form, helps search engines understand the topic, and appears in search result URLs where users evaluate whether to click.

The Rules of a Perfect SEO Slug

1. Use Hyphens, Not Underscores

Google explicitly recommends hyphens (-) as word separators in URLs. Google treats hyphens as word separators — my-blog-post is indexed as three separate words: "my", "blog", "post". Underscores are treated as connectors — my_blog_post is indexed as a single word: "myblogpost". Always use hyphens.

2. Use Lowercase Only

URLs are case-sensitive on most servers. /Blog/Post and /blog/post can be treated as two different pages, causing duplicate content issues. Always use all-lowercase slugs. Our generator automatically lowercases all text.

3. Remove Special Characters

Characters like !, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, (, ), +, = must be percent-encoded in URLs, making them ugly and hard to share. Our generator strips these automatically, keeping only alphanumeric characters and hyphens.

4. Handle Accented Characters

Accented characters (é, ñ, ü, ç, ø) should be transliterated to their ASCII equivalents for maximum compatibility:

• café → cafe
• año → ano
• über → uber

However, Google does support Unicode in URLs, so for non-English content, keeping the native characters can be valid. Our tool converts them to ASCII for maximum compatibility.

5. Keep It Concise

Shorter slugs are generally better for SEO and user experience. Aim for 3–5 words. Long slugs are unwieldy to share, take more space in search results, and often include filler words.

6. Include Your Target Keyword

Your primary keyword should appear in the slug. If your page targets "best running shoes for flat feet," a good slug is best-running-shoes-flat-feet.

7. Remove Stop Words (Optional)

Words like "a," "the," "and," "or," "is," "in" are often removed from slugs to keep them shorter. "How to bake sourdough bread" → bake-sourdough-bread or how-to-bake-sourdough-bread (keeping "how to" as it may have search value).

Slug Naming Conventions by Platform

• WordPress: Auto-generates slugs from post titles but allows manual editing. Uses hyphens by default.
• Next.js / Astro: File names in the pages/ directory become URL slugs. Use kebab-case filenames.
• GitHub: Repository and file names use hyphens. Branch names commonly use feature/my-feature-name.
• YouTube: Video titles become slugs in the URL. YouTube does its own slug generation.
• Medium / Substack / Ghost: Auto-generate slugs from post titles with hyphens.

Changing a Slug After Publishing: The SEO Risk

Once a page is published and indexed, changing its slug is risky. All inbound links to the old URL will become broken unless you set up a 301 (permanent) redirect from the old URL to the new one. Each broken link loses link equity (PageRank) that was accumulated. Best practice: get the slug right before publishing.

Use our free Slug Generator to instantly create SEO-optimized URL slugs from any text. For text case conversion needs, also try our Case Converter.