URL Slug Generator

How to use the URL Slug Generator

1. Paste your title or headline

   Type it exactly as it will appear on the page. The slug preview updates on every keystroke.

2. Decide about stop-words

   Removing words like a, the, and, of makes slugs shorter and cleaner. Keep them when dropping one changes the meaning — "history of india" reads differently from "history india".

3. Check the result reads as a phrase

   Someone should be able to guess what the page is about from the slug alone, without the title. If it reads as word soup, edit the input rather than the output.

4. Use batch mode for lists

   Paste one title per line to convert a whole content plan or a spreadsheet column of old URLs in one pass.

5. Copy it into your CMS before publishing

   Set the slug before the page goes live. Changing it afterwards means setting up a 301 redirect, and every redirect you avoid is a redirect that cannot break later.

What this tool does

What makes a good slug

Six rules cover almost every case.

Lowercase, always

On Linux servers, /About-Us and /about-us work as two different pages. If both links open, there will be a duplicate content issue, and if only one opens, there will be a risk of a broken link. Therefore, always use lowercase letters.

Hyphens, not underscores

Google has been explicit about this for over a decade: hyphens separate words, underscores join them. web_design can be read as a single token; web-design is unambiguously two words. Hyphens are also easier to read, and they survive being typed out loud.

Short, but not cryptic

Three to five meaningful words is the sweet spot. /web-design-udaipur beats /professional-affordable-web-design-and-development-services-in-udaipur-rajasthan-india. Long slugs get cut off in search results, do not wrap properly when shared, and unnecessary words weaken the signals.

Describe the page, not the site structure

The slug should tell what the page is about. Category prefixes are usually useless — /blog/seo/on-page/title-tags carries no more meaning than /title-tags  and it creates a deep path that is difficult to change later.

No dates unless they are the point

/2023/05/seo-guide tells every visitor the piece is years old, even if you rewrote it last week. It also makes updating awkward you either keep a misleading date or move the URL. Keep dates in the metadata where they belong.

Transliterate rather than encode

Non-ASCII characters get percent-encoded in URLs, so a slug with é or ñ becomes an unreadable string when copied. Transliteration gives you  cafe rather than caf%C3%A9.

The stop-word question

Stop-words are the connective tissue of English — a, an, the, of, in, for, and. Removing them shortens slugs and concentrates the keywords. They are also ignored by search engines, so their presence adds little.

But not always. Sometimes the small word carries the meaning:

• "The Office" → office loses the title entirely
• "How to Design a Website" → design-website is fine
• "War of the Worlds" → war-worlds is worse than war-of-the-worlds

The rule: strip stop-words by default, then read the result aloud. If it sounds broken, put them back. This tool leaves the choice with you rather than deciding for you.

Changing a slug on a live page

Changing a URL slug that has already been published and indexed in Google can be quite harmful. As soon as you change a live slug, all signals associated with that old link—such as backlinks (inbound links), ranking history, social shares, and bookmarks—are lost, unless you redirect properly.

If you must change one:

1. Set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. A 301 is permanent and passes almost all ranking signal; a 302 is temporary and does not.

2. Update internal links to point at the new URL directly. Leaving them pointing at the redirect wastes crawl time and adds a hop for every visitor.

3. Resubmit Sitemap: Go to Google Search Console and submit your new sitemap so that the Google crawler can find the new URL quickly.
   
   
4. Keep the redirect forever. Never remove this redirect. Deleting it after a year or so will break all the old backlinks, even though those old backlinks are the most valuable assets for your site.
   

Paying just 30 seconds of attention before publishing is absolutely free, but changing the slug later means you will have to handle the hassle of redirects forever.

Slugs and duplicate content

Often, the issue of duplicate content on websites does not arise from copying text, but due to different URL variations of the same page. For example, if your single page opens on all four of these links /about, /About, /about/ and /about/index.html Google will consider it as 4 separate pages. The result? Your page's ranking power and authority will be split into four parts and your ranking will drop.

Fix this issue immediately at these two levels: Implement server-level redirects: Establish a standard format such as always using lowercase letters and no trailing slashes (/) After this, set up a server-side redirect so that the other three variations automatically redirect to your main (Original) link.

Add a Self-referencing Canonical Tag: Be sure to add a canonical tag (rel="canonical") in the section of every page. With this, even if a user or crawler reaches your page through a different variation, Google's crawler will instantly understand which one is the original, correct version that should be indexed.

Batch converting during a migration

The real work of Batch Mode happens during a website migration. When you shift your site from one platform to another (like WordPress to custom PHP), you have an Excel sheet with hundreds of old URLs and titles for which you need new, clean slugs.

Just paste your column containing titles here, convert them all together, and get new slugs ready in just a few seconds. After this, create your Redirect Map (Old-to-New URL) even before taking the site live. Often during a migration, websites lose half their traffic because no one does URL mapping, and on the launch day, all the old ranking pages start showing a 404 Error.

What about non-English slugs?

You can use Hindi or any other language script in a URL, and modern browsers display it correctly too. However, on the backend, it becomes Percent-encoded. This means that as soon as someone copies this link and pastes it into WhatsApp or an Excel sheet, it will turn into a very long and strange code.

Therefore, for an Indian audience, a Hinglish (Transliterated ASCII) slug is the best and most practical option. These can be easily read anywhere, are safe to share, and appear perfectly clean in Google Analytics as well.

Frequently asked questions