What Is a URL Slug?
The slug is the readable part of a URL that identifies a specific page. In brandella.in/title-tag-optimization/, the slug is title-tag-optimization.
A good slug tells both people and search engines what the page is about before they even click.
How to Use This SEO Slug Generator
- Paste your titles. Add one title, or a whole list with one title per line for bulk conversion.
- Choose your options. Remove stop words, limit the number of words, and pick hyphens or underscores.
- Check the result. Each slug shows its full URL and character count, with a warning if it gets too long.
- Copy. Copy one slug at a time, or every slug at once for a content plan or spreadsheet.
What the Generator Cleans Up
- Converts everything to lowercase so you never end up with duplicate URLs that differ only by case.
- Turns accented letters into plain ones, so "Café Résumé" becomes "cafe resume".
- Replaces "&" with "and" and drops apostrophes, quotes and other symbols.
- Removes filler words like "the", "of" and "to" when you want a tighter slug.
- Joins words with a single separator and never leaves double or trailing separators.
Best Practices for SEO Friendly Slugs
Google's own guidance recommends simple, descriptive URLs that use words people understand, separated by hyphens rather than underscores.
Keep slugs short and focused on the main keyword. Three to five words is usually plenty.
Avoid putting years or numbers in a slug if you plan to refresh the article later. A slug like seo-best-practices can be updated every year, while one ending in a year will look dated.
Most importantly, do not change a slug on a published page unless you add a 301 redirect. Our guide to building a redirect manager in PHP shows how. For more on URL design, see URL structure for AI SEO and generating SEO friendly URLs in PHP.
Frequently Asked Questions
1What makes a URL slug SEO friendly?
An SEO friendly slug is short, lowercase, descriptive, includes the main keyword, and uses hyphens between words. It avoids stop words, symbols and dates that may go out of date.
2Should I use hyphens or underscores in URLs?
Use hyphens. Google recommends hyphens to separate words in URLs, because underscores can cause words to be read as one combined term.
3Should I remove stop words from slugs?
Usually yes, because it keeps the slug short and focused. Keep a stop word only when removing it changes the meaning or makes the slug hard to read.
4Can I convert many titles at once?
Yes. Paste one title per line and the SEO slug generator creates a slug for each, which you can copy individually or all together.