The Complete Guide to URL Slugs for SEO

What Is a URL Slug?

The slug is the part of a URL that identifies a specific page in human-readable form. In this URL:

```

https://example.com/blog/how-to-bake-sourdough-bread

```

The slug is `how-to-bake-sourdough-bread`.

It comes after the domain and any path segments like `/blog/`. A good slug tells both users and search engines what the page is about before they even click on it.

Why Slugs Matter for SEO

Search engines use URLs as one of many ranking signals. While the slug alone will not make or break your rankings, a well-crafted slug contributes to better SEO in several ways:

1. Keyword visibility. Google bolds matching keywords in URLs in search results. A slug like `best-running-shoes-2025` reinforces the page's topic.

2. Click-through rate. Users are more likely to click on a URL they can read and understand. Compare:

- `example.com/products/lightweight-running-shoes` (clear)

- `example.com/products/item?id=48291&cat=3` (cryptic)

3. Link context. When someone shares your URL in a forum, chat, or plain-text email, the slug itself provides context about where the link goes.

4. Crawl efficiency. Clean URL structures help search engine crawlers understand your site hierarchy.

Best Practices for URL Slugs

Use lowercase only

URLs are case-sensitive on most servers. `/About-Us` and `/about-us` can be treated as different pages, which splits your SEO equity and confuses crawlers.

```

Bad: /blog/My-First-Post

Good: /blog/my-first-post

```

Use hyphens, not underscores

Google treats hyphens as word separators but treats underscores as word joiners. `web-development` is read as two words; `web_development` is read as one.

```

Bad: /blog/web_development_tips

Good: /blog/web-development-tips

```

Keep it short and descriptive

Aim for 3 to 5 words that capture the page's core topic. Remove filler words like "a", "the", "and", "of", "to" when they do not add meaning.

```

Bad: /blog/the-ultimate-and-complete-beginners-guide-to-learning-python-programming

Good: /blog/python-beginners-guide

```

Include your target keyword

Put your primary keyword in the slug, ideally near the beginning. But keep it natural — do not stuff multiple keyword variations.

```

Bad: /blog/post-12345

Bad: /blog/best-shoes-running-shoes-top-shoes-2025

Good: /blog/best-running-shoes-2025

```

No special characters

Avoid spaces (which become `%20`), ampersands, question marks, accented characters, and any non-ASCII characters in slugs. They create ugly, hard-to-share URLs.

```

Bad: /blog/café-recommendations-in-paris

Good: /blog/cafe-recommendations-paris

```

Avoid dates in slugs (usually)

Including dates like `/2025/02/13/my-post` makes URLs longer and can make content feel outdated. If you update the article later, the old date is baked into the URL.

Exceptions: news sites and genuinely time-specific content (event recaps, annual roundups).

```

Avoid: /blog/2025/02/best-react-frameworks

Better: /blog/best-react-frameworks

```

Use a flat, logical structure

Keep your URL structure shallow. Deep nesting makes URLs long and suggests an overly complex site architecture.

```

Bad: /resources/guides/web/frontend/react/state-management

Good: /guides/react-state-management

```

What to Do When You Change a Slug

If you change an existing page's slug, you must set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Without a redirect:

- Existing backlinks point to a 404 page, and you lose that link equity

- Bookmarks and shared links break

- Search engines may keep the old URL indexed

```

# In your .htaccess, nginx config, or Next.js middleware:

/blog/old-slug -> 301 -> /blog/new-slug

```

Slug Patterns by Content Type

Different content types benefit from different slug strategies:

Blog posts:

```

/blog/topic-keyword-phrase

/blog/python-beginners-guide

```

Product pages:

```

/products/product-name

/products/wireless-noise-canceling-headphones

```

Category pages:

```

/category/category-name

/tools/developer-tools

```

Landing pages:

```

/feature-or-benefit

/free-json-formatter

```

Real-World Examples

Let us look at some well-known sites and their slug choices:

• GitHub: `github.com/facebook/react` — clean, hierarchical, descriptive
• MDN: `developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/grid` — logical path structure
• Dev.to: `dev.to/username/title-of-article-abc` — short, readable slugs with a hash suffix for uniqueness

Generate Clean Slugs Automatically

Manually converting titles to slugs is error-prone. You might forget to remove a special character, leave in an uppercase letter, or end up with double hyphens.

The [Slug Generator](/tools/slug-generator) on ToolBox handles all of this automatically:

- Converts any text to a clean, URL-safe slug

- Strips diacritics (accented characters) and special characters

- Converts spaces and underscores to hyphens

- Removes consecutive hyphens and leading/trailing hyphens

- Supports custom separator characters

- Shows a live preview as you type

Example transformations:

| Input | Output |

|---------------------------------------|---------------------------------|

| How to Bake Sourdough Bread | how-to-bake-sourdough-bread |

| 10 Tips & Tricks for CSS Grid! | 10-tips-tricks-for-css-grid |

| Les Misérables (2012 Film) | les-miserables-2012-film |

| What is a URL slug??? | what-is-a-url-slug |

Next time you are publishing a blog post or creating a new page, run the title through the [Slug Generator](/tools/slug-generator) to get a clean, SEO-ready URL slug in seconds. No signup, no tracking, runs in your browser.