What Is a URL Slug Generator?
A URL slug generator converts human-readable text into URL-friendly strings by removing special characters, replacing spaces with hyphens or other separators, and normalizing unicode characters. Slugs are the portion of a URL that identifies a page in an easy-to-read form, such as 'my-blog-post' in example.com/blog/my-blog-post. Well-crafted slugs improve SEO, readability, and shareability of web pages.
How to Use the URL Slug Generator
- 1Enter or paste the text you want to convert into the input text area.
- 2Choose your preferred separator: hyphen (-), underscore (_), or dot (.).
- 3Toggle the lowercase option on or off depending on your preference.
- 4Optionally set a maximum length to keep slugs concise.
- 5Copy the generated slug using the copy button.
Use Cases
Blog Post URLs
Convert article titles into clean, SEO-friendly URL slugs that are descriptive and easy for search engines and users to understand.
E-commerce Product Pages
Generate consistent, readable product URLs from product names to improve navigation, SEO rankings, and customer experience.
CMS Content Management
Auto-generate URL slugs from page titles when building content management systems, ensuring unique and properly formatted permalinks.
File Naming Conventions
Sanitize user-provided strings for use as file names or directory names, removing special characters and spaces that could cause issues.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a good URL slug?
A good slug is short, descriptive, uses lowercase letters, separates words with hyphens, avoids special characters and stop words, and accurately reflects the page content. Keeping slugs under 60 characters is recommended for SEO.
Do URL slugs affect SEO?
Yes, URL slugs are a minor but relevant SEO ranking factor. Search engines use slug keywords to understand page content. Clean, descriptive slugs also improve click-through rates in search results because users can see what the page is about.
How does this tool handle special characters and accents?
The tool normalizes unicode characters using NFD decomposition, which strips accents from characters (e.g., é becomes e, ü becomes u). All remaining non-alphanumeric characters are removed and spaces are replaced with the chosen separator.
Should I use hyphens or underscores in URLs?
Google recommends using hyphens (-) as word separators in URLs because they treat hyphens as word separators but treat underscores as word joiners. For example, 'my-page' is read as two words while 'my_page' may be treated as one.