🔗 SEO Slug Generator

What Makes a Good SEO URL Slug?

A URL slug is the part of a URL that identifies a specific page in a human-readable way. Good slugs are short, descriptive, and contain the primary keyword for the page. They use hyphens to separate words, contain only lowercase letters and numbers, and avoid stop words, special characters, and unnecessary filler.

Google's URL guidelines recommend keeping URLs short, using hyphens (not underscores) between words, and structuring them to reflect site hierarchy. Slugs that clearly describe the page content help search engines understand what the page is about before they've even crawled it.

Stop Words and When to Remove Them

Stop words are common words like "a", "the", "and", "of", "in", and "is" that add length without adding meaning to a URL. Removing them produces shorter, cleaner slugs: "how-to-bake-perfect-chocolate-cake" is better than "how-to-bake-the-perfect-chocolate-cake". However, keep stop words when they're part of a proper noun or when removal changes the meaning ("state-of-the-art" → "state-art" loses meaning).

Slug Length

There's no absolute maximum, but most SEO best practices recommend keeping slugs under 60 characters. Shorter slugs are easier to share, less likely to be truncated in browser address bars and search results, and tend to be more keyword-focused. Avoid slugs that are just a single keyword — a 2-4 word slug typically provides the best balance of brevity and descriptiveness.

Changing Existing Slugs

If you change an existing page's slug, always set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Without it, you'll lose all backlinks, social shares, and any ranking equity the old URL had accumulated. Tools like this generator are most valuable for new content before it's published.