A URL slug is the part of a URL that identifies a specific page in a human-readable format. For example, in the URL example.com/blog/my-first-post, "my-first-post" is the slug.

What characters are safe in URL slugs?

URL slugs should only contain lowercase letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), and hyphens (-). Spaces, special characters, and accented letters should be converted or removed.

What are stop words and should I remove them?

Stop words are common words like "the", "a", "and", "in" that add little meaning. Removing them creates shorter, cleaner slugs, but it's optional and depends on your preference.

Slug Generator - Convert Text to URL-Friendly Slugs

Why I Built This Slug Generator

Every time I create a blog post or add a new page, I need a URL slug. For years I did this manually - lowercase the title, replace spaces with hyphens, remove special characters. It's tedious and error-prone, especially with non-English characters.

This tool handles all the edge cases I've encountered: Czech diacritics like ř, š, ž get transliterated properly. Stop words can be removed to keep URLs short. And I can preview exactly how the URL will look before using it.

What I Use This For

Blog Post URLs - Converting article titles to clean permalinks
Product URLs - Creating SEO-friendly product page URLs
Category Slugs - Generating URL-safe category and tag names
File Names - Creating safe file names from user input
API Identifiers - Generating human-readable IDs for APIs

I often use this alongside the Case Converter when working with different naming conventions, and the Word Counterto check title length before converting.

URL Slug Best Practices

After optimizing hundreds of URLs for SEO, here's what I've learned actually matters:

Keep it short - Aim for 3-5 words. Shorter URLs are easier to share and remember.
Use hyphens, not underscores - Google treats hyphens as word separators, underscores as joiners.
Include keywords - Put your main keyword in the slug, but don't stuff it.
Avoid dates in slugs - Unless your content is time-sensitive, dates make URLs longer and harder to update.
Be consistent - Pick a convention and stick with it across your entire site.

Transliteration for International Content

If you write in languages with accented characters, transliteration is essential. German ü becomes u, French é becomes e, Czech ř becomes r. This ensures your URLs work everywhere and don't break when copied into systems that only support ASCII.

The transliteration in this tool covers most European languages. For languages like Chinese or Arabic that use completely different scripts, you'd typically use a different approach like pinyin romanization.

Stop Words: When to Remove Them

Removing stop words is a trade-off. "How to Write Better Code" becomes "write-better-code" - shorter and arguably better. But sometimes stop words matter for meaning: "The Office" shouldn't become "office".

I usually enable stop word removal for blog posts and articles, but disable it for product names, brand names, and titles where every word is intentional.

URL Slugs: Best Practices for SEO-Friendly URLs

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a URL slug?

A URL slug is the human-readable part of a URL that identifies a specific page. In "example.com/blog/my-awesome-post", the slug is "my-awesome-post". Good slugs are lowercase, use hyphens between words, and describe the page content.

Why are URL slugs important for SEO?

Search engines use URLs to understand page content. A URL like "/learn-javascript" tells Google what the page is about, while "/page?id=12345" says nothing. Users also prefer clicking on descriptive URLs in search results.

Should I use hyphens or underscores?

Always use hyphens. Google treats hyphens as word separators, so "my-blog-post" is read as three separate words. Underscores join words, so "my_blog_post" might be interpreted as one word. This affects search ranking.

How long should a URL slug be?

Keep slugs under 60 characters - shorter is better. Focus on 3-5 key words that describe the page. Longer slugs get truncated in search results and are harder to share or remember.

Slug Generator