What is a URL slug?
A slug is the readable part of a web address that identifies a page, such as how-to-brew-coffee in example.com/blog/how-to-brew-coffee. Good slugs are short, lowercase, use hyphens between words and contain only plain letters and numbers. They are easier to read and share, they look trustworthy in search results, and they avoid the percent-encoded mess that spaces and accented characters produce, like cr%C3%A8me.
This converter handles the fiddly parts for you: it transliterates accents (é becomes e, ß becomes ss), drops apostrophes so “don't” becomes “dont”, turns “&” into “and”, collapses punctuation and spaces into single separators, and trims leftover separators from the ends.
How to use it
- Type or paste a title. For bulk conversion, put one title on each line.
- Choose a separator. Hyphens are recommended for URLs.
- Optionally set a maximum length; the slug is cut at a word boundary.
- Tick remove stop words to drop small words like “a”, “the” and “of” for a shorter slug.
- Copy the result.
Slug best practices for SEO
- Use hyphens, not underscores. Google treats hyphens as word separators.
- Keep it short and descriptive. Three to five meaningful words usually works well.
- Include the main keyword naturally, but do not stuff extra words in.
- Avoid dates and numbers that will make the URL feel out of date, unless they are essential.
- Do not change slugs of published pages without setting up a 301 redirect from the old address.
Examples
| Title | Slug |
|---|---|
| 10 Tips & Tricks for Crème Brûlée at Home! | 10-tips-and-tricks-for-creme-brulee-at-home |
| Don't Stop — Straße | dont-stop-strasse |
| The Best Guide to SEO (stop words removed) | best-guide-seo |
More worked examples
Blog post: “10 Tips for Working From Home in 2027!” becomes 10-tips-for-working-from-home-in-2027, or 10-tips-working-from-home-2027 with stop words removed.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Changing slugs of live pages. Set up a 301 redirect from the old URL, or you lose links and rankings.
- Using underscores. Google treats hyphens as word separators, so prefer hyphens.
- Making slugs too long. Keep the main keyword and cut filler. For title and description length, use the meta tag generator.
Sources and methodology
The calculations on this page follow these published standards and references. The code is covered by automated tests against known values.