Question 1

What is a URL slug?

Accepted Answer

A URL slug is the human-readable portion of a URL that identifies a specific page — the part after the domain name. For example, in 'https://example.com/blog/my-first-post', the slug is 'my-first-post'. Slugs are typically lowercase, hyphen-separated, and descriptive of the page content.

Question 2

How do I create an SEO-friendly URL slug?

Accepted Answer

An SEO-friendly slug should be lowercase, use hyphens to separate words, include relevant keywords, and be as short as possible while remaining descriptive. Remove stop words like 'a', 'the', and 'of'. Avoid special characters, spaces, and uppercase letters. For example, 'How to Bake a Chocolate Cake' becomes 'how-to-bake-chocolate-cake'.

Question 3

Should URL slugs be lowercase?

Accepted Answer

Yes, URL slugs should always be lowercase. Most web servers treat URLs as case-sensitive, so 'My-Post' and 'my-post' could resolve to different pages. Using lowercase consistently avoids duplicate content issues and is the universal best practice recommended by Google.

Question 4

Should I use hyphens or underscores in URL slugs?

Accepted Answer

Use hyphens, not underscores. Google treats hyphens as word separators, so 'my-blog-post' is read as three separate words. Underscores join words together, so 'my_blog_post' is treated as one word. Hyphens are the SEO-recommended choice for URL slugs.

Question 5

How do I handle special characters in a URL slug?

Accepted Answer

Special characters (accents, symbols, punctuation) should be removed or transliterated in URL slugs. Accented letters like é, ü, or ñ are typically converted to their ASCII equivalents (e, u, n). This tool automatically handles transliteration and removes non-alphanumeric characters, producing clean, safe URLs.

URL Slug Generator

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