The human-readable part of a URL that identifies a page. In example.com/how-to-bake-bread, the slug is how-to-bake-bread.

What are the rules for a good URL slug?

Lowercase, hyphens between words, no special characters, short and descriptive, contains the primary keyword.

Should I use hyphens or underscores in slugs?

Hyphens. Google treats hyphens as word separators but treats underscores as joiners — so underscores hurt keyword recognition in URLs.

Can I change a slug after publishing?

Yes, but set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one to preserve links and search rankings.

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Slug Generator

Create clean, SEO-friendly URL slugs from any text. Free, instant, no signup.

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Tool

Title or phrase

Lowercase Remove stop words

Separator:

Generated slug

What Makes a Good URL Slug?

Rule	Good example	Bad example
All lowercase	best-running-shoes	Best-Running-Shoes
Hyphens, not underscores	chocolate-cake-recipe	chocolate_cake_recipe
No special characters	what-is-json	what-is-json?!
Short and descriptive	seo-meta-tags	how-to-write-perfect-seo-meta-tags-in-2024
Keyword included	css-gradient-generator	page-1

Hyphens vs Underscores in URLs

Google officially recommends hyphens as word separators in URLs. With hyphens, my-blog-post is indexed as three separate words. With underscores, my_blog_post is treated as a single token — harming keyword recognition. Stick with hyphens unless your platform forces otherwise.

Stop Words to Remove from Slugs

Stop words are common words that add no SEO value to a URL: a, an, the, and, but, or, in, on, at, to, for, of, with, by, from, is, was, are, be, been. Removing them makes slugs shorter and cleaner. Toggle the option above to see the difference.

Slug Generator

What Makes a Good URL Slug?

Hyphens vs Underscores in URLs

Stop Words to Remove from Slugs

Frequently Asked Questions