Slug Generator

What Is a URL Slug?

A URL slug is the human-readable part of a web address that identifies a specific page. In the URL https://textpire.com/tools/slug-generator, the slug is slug-generator. Slugs are used in blog posts, product pages, categories, and any page that benefits from a descriptive, memorable URL rather than a numeric ID like /page?id=42.

Why URL Slugs Matter for SEO

Google explicitly uses URL structure as a ranking signal. Clean, keyword-rich slugs are easier for search engines to index and for users to understand and share. A slug like /how-to-remove-line-breaks immediately tells both search engines and humans what the page is about. Compare this to /p?node=4817 — which communicates nothing. Well-crafted slugs also appear in search result snippets, improving click-through rates.

Slug Best Practices

• Use hyphens, not underscores — Google treats hyphens as word separators but underscores as connectors. word-counter is parsed as two words; word_counter is treated as one.
• Keep it short — Aim for under 60 characters. Shorter slugs are cleaner in search results and social shares.
• Include the primary keyword — The most important keyword should appear in the slug, ideally near the beginning.
• Use lowercase only — URLs are case-sensitive on most servers. Lowercase prevents broken link issues.
• Remove stop words — Drop "a", "the", "and", "of" unless they are genuinely necessary for meaning.
• Avoid special characters — Accented letters, spaces, and symbols cause encoding issues. This tool removes them automatically.