Slug and SEO URL generator

The slug is the readable part of a URL that comes after the slash and tells, in a few words, what the page is about. A good slug is short, written in lowercase, free of accents and has its words separated by hyphens. Readers understand the content before they click, and Google gets one more clear signal about the topic. This tool generates the slug instantly, right in your browser.

What is a slug

A slug is the part of the URL that identifies a specific page within a site. In automarticles.com/blog/how-to-start-a-blog, the slug is how-to-start-a-blog. It almost always starts from the title, but goes through a cleanup before becoming an address: everything lowercase, accents removed and spaces and symbols swapped for hyphens. The result is a stable address that is easy to read and to share.

Why the slug matters for SEO and for the user

The slug works on two fronts at once: it helps the search engine understand the page and helps the reader decide on the click. Because it appears in the URL itself, it is one of the first things both Google and the reader see.

• Relevance signal: the keyword in the slug reinforces the page topic for Google.
• Clarity before the click: a readable URL hints at the content and builds trust in the results.
• Sharing: clean links look better on social media, messages and emails, and earn more clicks.
• Stability: a well thought slug lasts for years without a change, which preserves the page history.

Best practices for a good slug

• Short and direct: aim for 3 to 5 words and focus on the core topic.
• With the keyword: include the main term the page wants to rank for, near the start when possible.
• Always lowercase: uppercase letters can create duplicate addresses on some servers.
• Hyphens, not underscores: Google reads the hyphen as a separator between words.
• No accents or special characters: keep only a to z letters, numbers and hyphens.
• No needless stopwords: drop articles and prepositions like 'the', 'of' and 'for' when they add nothing.

Hyphen or underscore in a slug?

Use a hyphen. Google treats the hyphen as a word separator, so content-marketing reads as distinct terms. The underscore works as a join, and content_marketing can be read as a single word. That is why the hyphen is the recommended standard for URLs.

What to avoid in a slug

• Dates and years: a slug like /guide-2024 ages fast and forces a change when the content is updated.
• IDs and random numbers: /post/482 tells nothing about the content to a reader or to the search engine.
• URL parameters: addresses with ?id= or ?p= are fragile and hard to remember.
• Generic words: terms like 'page', 'post' or 'article' take up space without describing the topic.
• Slugs that are too long: repeating the full title dilutes the keyword and makes the link hard to share.

Examples of bad and good URLs

What happens when you change a slug

Changing the slug changes the page address, and the old address stops existing. Without a heads-up to the search engine, every link and all the authority built on that URL is lost, and anyone who follows the old link hits a 404 error. That is why every slug change needs a 301 redirect from the old address to the new one, which passes most of the accumulated SEO strength on to the new URL.