URL Slug Generator

What Are URL Slugs?

A URL slug is the portion of a web address that comes after the domain name and identifies a specific page in a human-readable format. The term originates from newspaper publishing, where a "slug" was a short label assigned to a story during production. In the web context, it serves the same purpose: providing a concise, descriptive identifier for a piece of content.

For example, in the URL https://example.com/blog/how-to-bake-bread, the slug is how-to-bake-bread. This slug immediately communicates the page's topic to both humans and search engines, which is why well-crafted slugs are considered an important aspect of on-page SEO and user experience design.

Slugs are typically generated automatically by content management systems when a new page or post is created, usually by transforming the title into a URL-safe format. However, automatic generation does not always produce optimal results, which is why dedicated slug generators with configurable options for stop word removal, transliteration, length limits, and custom character handling provide more control over the final output.

The SEO Impact of URL Slugs

While URL keywords are a relatively minor ranking factor compared to content quality and backlinks, they contribute to overall topical relevance signals in several meaningful ways. Users who see a descriptive URL in search results can immediately assess the page's relevance to their query, which influences click-through rates. Higher click-through rates send positive engagement signals back to search engines, creating an indirect but measurable SEO benefit.

Descriptive slugs also improve the user experience when URLs are shared in emails, messages, social media, and other contexts where the full URL is visible. A URL like example.com/blog/seo-audit-guide builds trust and sets expectations, while example.com/blog/p?id=47382 offers no clues about the destination, reducing the likelihood that someone will click. This matters especially for our link and URL tools collection, where every URL element contributes to the overall user experience.

Google's own documentation on URL structure recommends using "simple, descriptive words" in URLs. Google's John Mueller has confirmed that words in URLs serve as a lightweight ranking signal, particularly for new pages where other signals like backlinks have not yet accumulated. For established pages with strong content and backlinks, the URL's contribution to ranking is proportionally smaller.

Slug Best Practices

Following established conventions when creating URL slugs ensures consistency and maximizes their value for both SEO and user experience:

• Use lowercase letters exclusively: Some web servers treat URLs as case-sensitive, meaning /About and /about could serve different pages. Standardizing on lowercase prevents duplicate content issues and maintains consistency.
• Use hyphens as word separators: Google explicitly recommends hyphens over underscores because their algorithm treats hyphens as word separators. The slug web-design is interpreted as "web design," while web_design may be treated as a single compound word.
• Include the target keyword: Place the most important keywords at the beginning of the slug for maximum impact. This also ensures they remain visible even if the URL is truncated in search results.
• Keep slugs concise: Aim for 3-5 words that capture the page's core topic. Shorter slugs are easier to read, share, and remember.
• Avoid special characters: Characters like &, %, =, and spaces must be percent-encoded in URLs, making them ugly and difficult to read. Stick to alphanumeric characters and your chosen separator.

The Stop Words Debate

Stop words are common words like "a," "an," "the," "in," "on," "and," "for," and "to" that add little semantic value to a URL. Removing stop words from slugs produces shorter, more focused URLs. The title "How to Build a Website for Your Business" becomes build-website-business rather than how-to-build-a-website-for-your-business.

However, the SEO community is divided on whether aggressive stop word removal is always beneficial. The argument for removal centers on URL brevity and keyword concentration. The argument against it notes that modern search engines are sophisticated enough to ignore stop words when processing URLs, and that removing them can sometimes harm readability or change the intended meaning.

The most pragmatic approach is selective stop word removal: remove stop words that add no meaning (articles like "a" and "the"), but retain those that are essential to understanding (prepositions that define relationships, like "without" or "between"). If the slug reads naturally and communicates the page's topic clearly after stop word removal, the removal was appropriate.

Transliteration and Unicode

Transliteration is the process of converting characters from one script to corresponding characters in another. In the context of URL slugs, transliteration converts accented and special characters to their closest ASCII equivalents. The French word "resume" with accents becomes "resume," the German "uber" with an umlaut becomes "ueber," and the Spanish "nino" with a tilde becomes "nino."

While modern browsers and search engines can handle Unicode characters in URLs, transliteration remains a best practice for several reasons. Some older systems and email clients may not correctly render Unicode URLs. When URLs are shared in plain text contexts, Unicode characters may be percent-encoded into unreadable sequences. Additionally, ASCII-only slugs are universally compatible across all systems, servers, and platforms.

A comprehensive transliteration map should cover Latin-based scripts (French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Czech, Polish, Turkish, and others), converting each accented character to its base letter or a common substitution. For CJK characters (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and other non-Latin scripts, transliteration is typically impractical, and these characters are better handled by either keeping them as-is (if the site targets audiences who read those scripts) or using romanized equivalents.

CMS Slug Generation Comparison

Different content management systems handle slug generation differently, and understanding these differences helps you choose the right approach for your workflow:

• WordPress: Automatically generates slugs from post titles. Performs basic transliteration, lowercasing, and hyphenation. Does not remove stop words by default. Allows manual editing after generation.
• Ghost: Generates clean slugs with automatic stop word removal and transliteration. Limits slug length to a reasonable maximum. Considered one of the better automatic generators.
• Shopify: Creates slugs called "handles" from product and page titles. Uses basic hyphenation and lowercasing. Does not perform transliteration, which can be problematic for international stores.
• Hugo (static site generator): Generates slugs from filenames by default. Supports configurable slug generation through the slug front matter field and the slugify configuration option.
• Next.js / Gatsby: Do not generate slugs automatically. Developers define URL structures programmatically, giving complete control but requiring explicit slug generation logic.