How to Create SEO-Friendly URL Slugs
March 2025
For the complete 4000+ word guide with best practices, workflow, and tools, see Complete Guide to SEO-Friendly URL Slugs.
A URL slug is the part of a web address that identifies a page. Good slugs are short, descriptive, and use words people search for. Here is how to create them.
1. Start with your title
Use your page or article title as the base. For example: "10 Best Practices for Web Design". Our slug generator turns this into "10-best-practices-for-web-design".
2. Use lowercase
Slugs should be lowercase. Some systems treat uppercase and lowercase URLs differently, which can cause duplicate content. Lowercase keeps things consistent.
3. Use hyphens, not underscores
Hyphens separate words clearly. Google treats hyphens as word separators; underscores can blur words together. Use our kebab-case converter if you need to convert.
4. Remove special characters
Strip accents, symbols, and non-ASCII characters. "Café" becomes "cafe". Our slug generator and accent converter handle this.
5. Keep it short
Aim for 3–5 words. Long slugs are harder to read and share. Trim filler words like "the" and "a" when they do not add meaning.
Tools to use
- Slug Generator – main tool for creating slugs
- Title Case Converter – format headings first
- Kebab Case Converter – alternative format