What is a SEO Slug?
A SEO slug is simply the portion of a URL that identifies a specific webpage on a site. It is located just after the last forward slash (/) in the address.
Note: URL parameters (what comes after a question mark ?) and fragments (after a #) are not part of the slug.
Is There a Difference Between a URL Slug and a URL?
If you’re still wondering…
The URL refers to the full address of the page: it includes the protocol (https), the domain name (example.com), and the slug (/seo-guide).
The SEO slug, on the other hand, is only the last part of this address. It precisely designates the page in question.
Example:
In the following address → https://example.com/advanced-seo-article,
The whole thing constitutes the URL.
Whereas advanced-seo-article is the slug.
Why Is the SEO URL Slug Important?
Even though a URL slug may seem minor, it plays several essential roles for both users and search engines. Here’s why it deserves your attention:
It Improves User Experience
A URL made up of a meaningless string of letters and numbers is not engaging. This kind of structure can seem suspicious to users and discourage clicks.
Conversely, a clear and understandable slug inspires trust. It also helps users by indicating the topic of your page.
It Helps Users Understand Your Website’s Structure
Together with subfolders (other sections of your URL), it improves visitor navigation.
A well-structured URL reflects a logical hierarchy. This helps visitors understand where they are on your site.
For example, a URL like example.com/blog/seo/seo-slug immediately shows that:
- It is an article about SEO slugs.
- It belongs to a blog, under the SEO category.
It Enhances Your Website’s Organic SEO
Search engines also use slugs to identify the topic of a page.
Just like the title tag, link anchors, and page content itself, search engines use the URL to understand what your content is about.
However, John Mueller (Search Advocate at Google) states that words in a URL are a very weak ranking factor. According to him:
Here’s the full excerpt from a conversation I came across:
“We use the words in a URL as a very very lightweight factor. And from what I recall this is primarily something that we would take into account when we haven’t had access to the content yet. So if this is the absolute first time we see this URL we don’t know how to classify its content, then we might use the words in the URL as something to help rank us better. But as soon as we’ve crawled and indexed the content there then we have a lot more information. And then that’s something where essentially if the URL is in German or in Japanese or in English it’s pretty much the same thing.”
– John Mueller
In short, Google can use words in the URL to gather information about the content. However, there is no reason to think this would drastically improve your ranking for the targeted keyword.
Other Benefits of a Well-Optimized SEO Slug
It Increases Click-Through Rates on Your URL
For example, an article on WordPress SEO with the URL then7xt.com/wordpress-seo is clear, precise, and naturally attracts more clicks than the default URL generated by WordPress, such as then7xt.com/?p=607.
It Can Improve Your Search Rankings
A Backlinko study on ranking factors revealed a strong correlation between short URLs and higher positions in Google.
Source: Backlinko
We will discuss this in more detail later in the article…
Creating SEO-Optimized Slugs and URLs: Essential Steps
What should you consider when creating the right slug for your page or article? Let’s go through the key steps for optimization:
Always Include Your Target Keyword
It may seem obvious, but it’s crucial to include your target keyword in the slug.
This is a direct way to show your visitors the topic of your page.
In fact, Google itself states: “URLs containing words related to your content and site structure are optimized for good visitor navigation.”
Additionally, including your keyword in the URL sends a clear signal to Google: “this page is about this topic.”
Avoid Keyword Repetition
Repeating a keyword multiple times in a URL can make it appear over-optimized or even spammy.
It’s usually easy to avoid when creating a slug, but mistakes often happen when managing subfolders.
For example, consider this URL:
myer.com.au/c/men/mens-shoes/mens-sneakers
The word “men” is repeated three times.
While this isn’t catastrophic, the repetition is unnecessary. A cleaner version would be:
myer.com.au/c/men/shoes/sneakers
Keep the SEO Slug Short
We touched on this earlier: the importance of slug length.
Remember this: your URLs should be short and impactful.
Overly long URLs can potentially confuse Google and other search engines.
For example, this overloaded URL:
https://example.com/baseball/article-par-defaut-redirect-2024-news-baseball-stats
Between “article-par-defaut,” “redirect,” “2024,” “news,” and “stats,” Google (like the user) may have difficulty identifying the main topic of the page.
Compare this with a much simpler and clearer version:
https://example.com/baseball
Here, the topic is immediately identifiable. Google quickly understands the subject of your page.
In fact, according to a study conducted by Backlinko, they observed that short URLs tend to rank better than long ones.
More specifically, the URLs of pages in the first position are on average 9.2 characters shorter than those in the tenth position.
Source: Backlinko
More Info: What Is the Maximum Length of a SEO Slug?
Google Chrome and most modern browsers allow URLs up to 2048 characters long.
But this is absolutely no reason to make them that long.
In practice, it’s better to stick to 3–5 carefully chosen words in your slug.
Use Only Lowercase Letters
Even though most modern servers do not differentiate between uppercase and lowercase letters in URLs, some may treat them as distinct.
For example: https://example.com/My-Article and https://example.com/my-article could be treated as two separate destinations by some servers.
So don’t take the risk—stick to this basic rule: no capital letters in URLs!
Additionally, mixing uppercase and lowercase letters in your slugs can inadvertently create duplicate content.
Separate Words: Use Hyphens, Not Underscores
In a URL, words should be clearly separated to be understood by both users and search engines.
Use hyphens (-) to separate terms in your slug.
For example: https://example.com/beginners-seo-guide is much more readable than https://example.com/beginnersseoguide.
Why Are Hyphens So Important?
Because they are the recognized (and recommended) standard by Google for separating words in a URL.
Underscores (_) or spaces should be avoided.
Avoid Special Characters
Have you ever seen a URL containing backslashes () or brackets [ ]?
Probably not, because these are unsafe characters that don’t belong in a URL.
You should remove them for obvious reasons.
It is also recommended to remove other special characters like commas, colons, semicolons, etc.
Here’s what John Mueller from Google says on the topic:
“I generally recommend avoiding special characters such as commas, semicolons, colons, spaces, quotes, etc. in URLs to keep things simple.
URLs containing such characters are often harder to link to automatically (for example, when a user shares them on a forum or elsewhere) and harder to recognize correctly when we parse text content to detect new URLs.”
Do Not Use the Full Article Title
It may be tempting to let the system automatically generate the slug by using the full title of your article. However, this method has several drawbacks that are better avoided.
First, a slug generated from the full title is often too long.
Second, this type of slug complicates future content changes. If you decide to change the format or angle of your article (for example, from a guide to a case study or a list), the original URL may become inappropriate or even misleading.
For this reason, it’s better to keep only the main keyword in your slug, possibly with one or two additional words to reinforce its meaning or appeal.
For example, instead of having a very long URL that repeats the entire title, opt for something simple and clear. If you are creating a guide to learn SEO, choose a slug like learn-seo rather than the whole phrase.
Finally, to make your URL even more attractive, you can add a small word that matches the real search intent of users. For instance, if your visitors want to quickly master the basics, you can add a word like “quick” or “fast” at the end of the slug (learn-seo-quick). This makes your link more relevant and encourages clicks.
Avoid Including Dates in the Slug
Here’s the problem: a SEO slug is supposed to remain permanent over time.
There is usually no reason to insert elements that may become outdated, like dates.
Changing a URL later can harm both your SEO and user experience:
- Changing the slug (and therefore the page address) breaks all incoming links that pointed to that URL, causing the SEO benefit from backlinks to be lost.
- Users may land on a 404 error page.
However, if you are in a situation where adding a date in the URL is unavoidable, you must set up a redirect from the old URL to the new one.
On WordPress, this can be easily done using redirect plugins.
Update Your Slug in Time (If Truly Necessary)
Ideally, choose a slug that will remain relevant even several years after publication.
But if a change is absolutely necessary, make it as early as possible, before:
- users have already memorized or shared the URL;
- the page begins to gain SEO visibility (notably through backlinks).
Once the URL is widespread or well-ranked, changing it becomes much riskier.
Best Practices for URLs
Always Start Your URLs with HTTPS
The HTTPS protocol encrypts data exchanged between your visitors and your server.
It has been a light ranking factor since 2014.
In other words, if your site is not yet using HTTPS, it’s high time to make the switch.
There’s really no debate: HTTPS has become the standard.
So if your site isn’t secure yet, I highly recommend updating it as soon as possible.
Subdomains or Not? Make the Right Choice
Subdomains appear before the main domain name.
They are generally used to separate different sections of a site based on functionality.
For example, if your main domain is example.com, your blog could be on the subdomain blog.example.com.
Make sure to distinguish this from a subfolder, which is a common and simple configuration.
Example: example.com/blog/
Content stored in this /blog directory is considered to be in a subfolder of your site example.com.
Google states that content on a subdomain is treated just like any other content, and it is not harder to rank a subdomain than a subfolder.
However, many SEO professionals disagree. Several cases have been reported where sites saw a significant increase in traffic after moving content from a subdomain to a subfolder.
No one knows exactly why this happens, but the most widely accepted hypothesis among SEO experts is that Google sometimes treats subdomains as completely separate sites.
For some, this seems to be more than just a theory…
Source: Backlinko
My Recommendation: Use subdomains only if truly necessary.
Choose a Clear and Memorable Domain Name
If you are still in the process of creating your site and haven’t chosen a domain name yet, there’s no need to worry about including keywords or having a perfectly optimized name.
Instead, opt for a name that is simple to remember and easily identifiable—something memorable and “brandable.”
Here’s what John Mueller from Google said about domain names containing keywords:
“…Having keywords in the domain name does not guarantee better rankings for those keywords. And it has been that way for a very, very long time.”
Choose an Appropriate Domain Extension (TLD)
If your goal is to reach an international audience, prefer a generic top-level domain (gTLD), such as .com.
That said, .com remains the most recognized and trusted if you can secure it.
On the other hand, some extensions like .biz, .info, or .name are often associated with low-quality or spammy sites. Using them could harm your ability to earn quality links.
If you are targeting a local audience, you can choose either a gTLD or a country-code TLD (ccTLD), such as .fr or .co.uk.
Note: It is perfectly fine to use a .com extension even if your target audience is in a specific geographic area. This poses no issue.
Optimize the Page Path with Keywords
Subfolders help provide a clear hierarchy for your site and supply additional useful information in the URL.
For example:
mydomain.com/airpods.html
It’s hard to tell whether this is a sales page, a product review, or just an informational article.
Compare this with:
mydomain.com/store/earbuds/apple/airpods.html
Here, it is immediately clear that this is a product page dedicated to selling AirPods.
But the subfolder structure conveys much more:
- It shows that earbuds are a type of product among others in the online store.
- That the brand Apple is responsible for this model, and other Apple earbuds are probably available.
- That other earbud brands are likely offered by the store as well.
Another advantage: using subfolders allows you to incorporate keywords in URLs without it appearing artificial or spammy.
Poor URL Example:
mydomain.com/buy-apple-airpods-earbuds.html
Clean and Natural URL Example:
mydomain.com/store/earbuds/apple/airpods.html
Use as Many Subfolders as Necessary
Some SEO specialists believe that using many subfolders in a URL can harm SEO.
However, Google has clarified multiple times that this is not the case.
That said, in practice, with the way most CMSs work today, a URL with many levels of subfolders can indicate that a page is deeply buried in the site structure.
This is not ideal if you want it to be easily found, either by users or by Google. If you think this might be an issue for your site, don’t rely solely on the number of subfolders.
Instead, use a tool like Ahrefs Site Audit to crawl your site and identify pages that are considered “deep.
