A URL slug is the part of a web address that identifies a specific page in a human-readable form. For example, in https://example.com/my-blog-post, the slug is my-blog-post.

URL Slug Generator -- Clean URLs from Text

What Is a URL Slug?

A URL slug is the part of a web address that comes after the domain name and identifies a specific page in a human-readable way. For example, in https://example.com/url-slug-generator, the slug is url-slug-generator.

Good slugs are short, descriptive, and use only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. They help both users and search engines understand what a page is about before clicking on it.

URL Slug Best Practices for SEO

Keep it short -- aim for 3 to 5 words. Shorter slugs are easier to read, share, and remember.
Use hyphens, not underscores -- Google treats hyphens as word separators, which improves keyword recognition.
Lowercase only -- mixed case can cause duplicate content issues on case-sensitive servers.
Remove stop words -- words like "a", "the", "and", "of" add length without SEO value.
Include your target keyword -- placing your primary keyword in the slug signals relevance to search engines.
Avoid special characters -- stick to letters, numbers, and hyphens for maximum compatibility.
Do not change slugs after publishing -- changing a slug breaks existing links unless you set up a 301 redirect.

Slug Conventions by Platform

WordPress

WordPress auto-generates slugs from the post title. It lowercases text, replaces spaces with hyphens, and strips most special characters. You can edit the slug in the post editor under "Permalink". WordPress stores slugs in the post_name column of the wp_posts table.

Django

Django provides a built-in SlugField model field and the slugify() utility function. The default implementation lowercases, replaces spaces with hyphens, and removes non-alphanumeric characters. For Unicode support, set allow_unicode=True on the field.

Next.js

Next.js uses file-system routing, so slugs correspond to file or folder names under pages/ or app/. Dynamic slugs use bracket syntax like [slug].tsx. You generate slugs at build time in getStaticPaths or at request time via middleware.

Rails

Ruby on Rails does not include a built-in slug generator, but the parameterize method on strings converts text to a slug-friendly format. Gems like friendly_id add full slug support with history tracking, scoping, and conflict resolution.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I use hyphens instead of underscores in slugs?

Google treats hyphens as word separators but treats underscores as word joiners. The slug my-blog-post is parsed as three separate words, while my_blog_post is treated as a single token. Hyphens give you better keyword matching in search results.

Does this tool send my data to a server?

No. All processing happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. No text is transmitted, stored, or logged anywhere. You can verify this by disconnecting from the internet -- the tool will continue to work.

How do I handle non-Latin characters in slugs?

Enable the "Transliterate accented characters" option to convert characters like "u with umlaut" to "u", "n with tilde" to "n", and "e with accent" to "e". For languages that use non-Latin scripts (Chinese, Arabic, Cyrillic), consider using a transliteration library that maps characters to their Latin equivalents, or keep the original characters if your platform supports Unicode slugs.

What is the ideal slug length?

There is no hard limit, but 3 to 5 words (roughly 50 to 60 characters) is a good target. Google displays up to about 60 characters of a URL in search results. Shorter slugs are easier to share on social media and less likely to be truncated in links.