What is a URL Slug and How to Generate SEO-Friendly URLs

A URL slug is the part of a URL that identifies a specific page in human-readable form. In https://example.com/blog/what-is-a-url-slug, the slug is what-is-a-url-slug. Good slugs are short, descriptive, and use hyphens to separate words.

Why Slugs Matter for SEO

• Keywords in URL: Google considers words in the URL as a ranking signal. /blog/css-gradient-generator signals what the page is about.
• Click-through rate: Users are more likely to click search results with readable URLs than /page?id=4927.
• Sharing: Clean URLs look trustworthy when shared on social media, Slack, or email.

Slug Best Practices

• Use lowercase letters only.
• Separate words with hyphens (not underscores). Google treats hyphens as word separators.
• Remove stop words (a, an, the, is, of) when they don't add meaning.
• Keep slugs under 5-6 words. Shorter is better.
• Avoid special characters, accents, and Unicode when possible.
• Don't change slugs after publishing—it breaks links and loses SEO value.

How Slugs Are Generated

"How to Format SQL Queries for Readability"
→ toLowerCase()
→ replace special chars
→ replace spaces with hyphens
→ "how-to-format-sql-queries-for-readability"
→ (optionally remove stop words)
→ "format-sql-queries-readability"

Generate Slugs Online

Use our URL Slug Generator to convert any title or text into a URL-friendly slug. Handles Unicode, accented characters, and special symbols. Need the reverse? Try Slug to Title Converter. For case conversions, check Case Converter (camelCase, snake_case, kebab-case). Browse all Generators.