URL Slug Generator

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This URL slug generator turns any title or phrase into a clean, SEO-friendly URL slug. Type or paste a title and it instantly lowercases the text, swaps spaces for hyphens, strips accents and special characters, and trims the result to your chosen length. You can remove stop words and numbers, switch to underscores, add a base URL to see the full address, and convert many titles at once by putting one per line. Copy the slug or the full URL in one click.

What a URL Slug Is and Where It Sits

A URL slug is the part of a URL that identifies a specific page, written in readable words. In https://example.com/blog/best-running-shoes/, the domain name is example.com, /blog/ is the category path, and best-running-shoes is the slug.

Most content management systems create a slug from the page title automatically. WordPress calls the full address a permalink and lets you edit the slug in the post settings. Shopify, Webflow, Ghost and other CMS platforms work the same way.

Auto-generated slugs are often messy. A title like “10 Best Running Shoes for Beginners (2026 Update!)” can become 10-best-running-shoes-for-beginners-2026-update, which is long and includes a year that will soon look out of date. Some systems keep accents or encode special characters into strings like %C3%A9 that are hard to read and share.

A clean slug is short, readable and describes the page. It helps people understand a link before they click, makes URLs easier to share, and gives search engines a small, clear hint about the page topic.

What the Slug Generator Changes in Your Text

The generator applies a fixed set of rules so every slug comes out consistent. It converts text to lowercase (unless you turn that off), splits words at spaces and punctuation, joins them with your chosen separator, and removes anything that doesn’t belong in a clean URL. It also turns & into “and” and drops apostrophes, so “Tom’s Guide” becomes toms-guide rather than tom-s-guide.

Finally, it trims the slug to the maximum length you set (75 characters by default), cutting at a word boundary so you don’t end up with half a word at the end.

Lowercase letters and hyphens between words

URLs can be case sensitive. On many servers, /Running-Shoes/ and /running-shoes/ are different addresses, which can cause duplicate URLs or broken links if people type them differently. Using lowercase everywhere avoids that.

Hyphens are the standard word separator. Google treats a hyphen as a space between words, so running-shoes reads as “running shoes”. Underscores join words together in some contexts, which is why hyphens are the safer default. The generator offers underscores for cases where a system requires them, such as some file naming conventions.

Stripping special characters, accents and emoji

Special characters like ?, #, %, / and & have specific meanings in URLs. Leaving them in a slug can break the link or turn part of it into a query string. The generator removes them and uses the separator instead.

Accents and diacritics are converted to plain letters, so “Café Crème” becomes cafe-creme. Emoji and symbols are removed entirely.

The generator keeps only Latin letters (a–z) and numbers, which matches what most sites use for English and European languages. Titles written in scripts like Urdu, Arabic, Hindi or Chinese are removed rather than transliterated. For those, type an English or romanized version of the title to get a usable slug.

Optional stop word removal

Stop words are short, common words like “a”, “the”, “and”, “of”, “for”, “to”, “how” and “what”. Tick “Remove stop words” to drop them, which often makes slugs shorter and tighter. “How to Choose the Best Running Shoes” becomes choose-best-running-shoes.

Use it with care. Sometimes a stop word carries meaning, as in “Out of Office” or “To Be Continued”. The generator never removes every word; if a title is made only of stop words, it keeps them. Check the result and edit by hand when the meaning changes.

How to Create a Slug in Four Steps

  1. Enter your title. Type or paste the page title into the box. For bulk slug generation, put one title per line and you get one slug per line.
  2. Pick your options. Choose a hyphen or underscore separator and a maximum length. Tick “Remove stop words” to shorten slugs, “Remove numbers” to drop standalone numbers such as years or list counts, and keep “Lowercase” on for standard URLs.
  3. Add a base URL (optional). Enter your site or category address, such as https://example.com/blog/, to see the complete URL with a trailing slash.
  4. Check the tips and copy. The tool flags slugs over 60 characters and slugs longer than eight words, and confirms when a slug looks clean. Click “Copy slug” or “Copy full URL” and paste it into your CMS.

Everything runs 100% in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded or saved.

What Makes a Good SEO-Friendly URL

A good SEO-friendly URL is short, readable, lowercase and descriptive. Someone should be able to guess what the page is about just from the link. It uses hyphens between words, avoids special characters and query strings, and doesn’t change once it is published.

Google’s own guidance recommends simple, descriptive words in URLs over long ID numbers. Clean URLs also look better in search results, where Google shows the path as a breadcrumb, and in social posts and chat messages, where people decide whether to trust a link.

Keeping URL length short and descriptive

There is no official length limit for SEO, but shorter URLs are easier to read, remember and share. A practical target is three to six meaningful words, often under 60 characters for the slug.

Cut words that add nothing: “a”, “the”, “ultimate”, “complete guide to”. Remove dates unless they are central to the content, such as an annual report. A slug like best-running-shoes stays accurate when you update the article next year, while best-running-shoes-2026 will need changing or will look out of date.

Placing the focus keyword naturally

Include the focus keyword in the slug where it fits naturally, ideally near the start. If your page targets “running shoes for flat feet”, a slug like running-shoes-flat-feet is clear and relevant.

Don’t stuff in extra keywords or repeat them. running-shoes-best-running-shoes-cheap looks spammy to people and adds no value for search engines. The keyword in the URL is a minor signal at most; clarity matters more.

Changing Published Slugs Without Losing Traffic

Changing the slug of a published page changes its URL. The old URL then returns a 404 error, which loses any backlinks, bookmarks and rankings that pointed to it unless you redirect.

If you must change a slug:

  1. Set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. WordPress SEO plugins like Rank Math can create one automatically, or you can use the .htaccess Redirect Generator on Apache servers.
  2. Update internal links so they point straight to the new URL instead of going through the redirect.
  3. Update the canonical URL and your XML sitemap.
  4. Check Search Console over the next few weeks for crawl errors.

Only change slugs for a real reason, such as a misleading or broken URL. Small cosmetic changes are rarely worth the risk.

Slug Mistakes to Avoid

  • Leaving the default. Auto slugs often include stop words, numbers and dates you don’t need.
  • Using dates or years. They make evergreen content look out of date.
  • Keyword stuffing. Repeated keywords look spammy.
  • Mixed case. Capital letters can create duplicate URLs on case-sensitive servers.
  • Underscores or spaces. Spaces become %20 in URLs; underscores join words in some contexts.
  • Special characters. ?, & and # change how a URL is read.
  • Very long slugs. Long URLs get cut off in search results and are hard to share.
  • Changing slugs without redirects. You lose links and rankings.
  • Duplicate slugs. WordPress adds -2 to repeated slugs, which looks careless. Check before publishing.

Do Slugs Matter for AI Search?

AI search systems and answer engines read the same pages as traditional search engines. A descriptive URL slug helps them understand the page topic at a glance, and it makes cited links more trustworthy when they appear in an AI answer.

The slug is still a small signal compared with the page content itself. AI search tools quote and cite pages based on what they say, not their URL. A clean slug helps; it won’t make up for thin content.

A Simple Slug Checklist for Every Post

Before you hit publish, check that the slug is lowercase, hyphenated, short, keyword-relevant and free of dates and symbols. Fix title capitalization with the Case Converter, redirect changed URLs with the .htaccess Redirect Generator, build tracked campaign links with the UTM Builder, and see more on the FHSEO Hub free SEO tools page.

URL Slug Generator FAQs

A URL slug is the readable part at the end of a URL that identifies a specific page. In example.com/blog/best-running-shoes/, the slug is best-running-shoes. It is usually created from the page title and edited to be short, lowercase and hyphenated, so people and search engines can understand the page.

Hyphens are better for most URLs. Google treats hyphens as word separators, so best-running-shoes reads as three separate words. Underscores can join words together in some contexts and are harder to see when links are underlined. Use underscores only when a specific system or naming rule requires them.

Slugs have a small effect at most. Keywords in the URL are a minor signal, and Google mainly ranks pages on content and relevance. Clean slugs still help indirectly: they look trustworthy in search results and when shared, which can improve clicks, and they make your site structure easier to understand.

Keep slugs short and descriptive, usually three to six meaningful words and under about 60 characters. Remove stop words, filler and dates where they add nothing. There is no strict limit, but shorter slugs are easier to read, share and remember, and they are less likely to be cut off in search results.

It is safe only if you add a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Without a redirect, the old address returns a 404 error and you lose backlinks and rankings. Update internal links, your sitemap and the canonical tag too. Avoid changing slugs for small cosmetic reasons.