What is a URL Slug?
A URL slug is the last segment of a URL path — the part that describes the specific page. For example:
https://example.com/how-to-make-money-onlinehttps://example.com/blog/best-seo-tips-2025
Slugs should be short, lowercase, use hyphens instead of spaces, and contain only the most important keywords.
Why URL Slugs Matter for SEO
- Keywords in URL: Google uses the URL as a ranking signal. A slug with your target keyword gives a small but real SEO advantage.
- Readability: Clean slugs are easier to remember, share, and copy.
- Click-through rate: Clean URLs in search results look more professional and trustworthy.
- Avoiding penalties: Long, messy URLs with strange characters can confuse search engines.
How to Generate a Perfect Slug
1Type or paste your page title (e.g., "How to Make Money Online in 2025").
2Choose a separator: hyphens (recommended) or underscores.
3Enable lowercase to ensure the slug is all-lowercase (required by most CMS platforms).
4Optionally enable Remove stop words to strip common filler words (a, the, is, in…).
5Copy the generated slug — it updates live as you type.
💡 SEO Best Practice: Keep slugs under 60 characters. Include your main keyword. Avoid dates (e.g., /2025/) unless your content is time-sensitive — date-based slugs age poorly.
Hyphens vs Underscores in Slugs
Google officially treats hyphens as word separators but treats underscores as joining characters. So best-seo-tips has three separate words, while best_seo_tips is treated as one word by some crawlers. Always prefer hyphens for web URLs.
FAQ
Should I include the year in my slug?
Only if the content is genuinely time-specific (e.g., "Best Phones of 2025"). Avoid years in evergreen content slugs — they force you to either update the URL (losing link equity) or keep outdated URLs.