URL slug generator

Turn any title or text into a clean, SEO-friendly URL slug instantly.

your-slug-will-appear-here

What makes a good URL slug

A slug is the human-readable tail of a URL. Google has stated that words in the URL are a very minor ranking factor, so the real case for a clean slug is people: it survives being pasted into a message, read aloud, or printed, and it tells a reader what they are about to open.
GuidelineWhy
Keep it short — 3 to 5 wordsLong slugs get truncated in search results and are painful to share.
Use hyphens, never underscoresGoogle treats a hyphen as a word separator and an underscore as a joiner, so best_free_tools reads as one token.
Lowercase everythingPaths are case-sensitive on most servers, so /About and /about can serve as two different pages.
Drop filler wordsa, the, and, of rarely add meaning and cost length.
Leave out dates and numbersPutting /2026/ in a slug forces a redirect the moment you refresh the content.
Never change a live slugChanging it breaks every existing link. If you must, add a 301 redirect from the old path.

How this converter transforms text

The steps run in order, which matters — accents are folded before punctuation is stripped, so an accented letter becomes its base letter rather than disappearing.
StepExample
LowercaseHello World → hello world
Fold accents to base lettersCafé Münster → cafe munster
Remove punctuation and symbolsHello, World! (2026) → hello world 2026
Collapse whitespace to single hyphenshello world → hello-world
Trim hyphens from both ends-hello-world- → hello-world

Where slugs are used

The same format shows up well beyond blog URLs. WordPress calls it the post slug; Shopify uses it for product handles; static site generators derive it from the filename. It is also the safe form for CSS class names, image and asset filenames, anchor link targets, database identifier keys, Git branch names, and Kubernetes resource names — anywhere a string has to be predictable, lowercase, and free of spaces and punctuation.

Non-Latin scripts

Accents fold cleanly because a letter such as é has an obvious Latin base. Scripts with no Latin equivalent — Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Hebrew — do not, and stripping them would leave an empty slug.

Modern browsers handle non-Latin characters in URLs correctly by percent-encoding them, so keeping the original script is a legitimate choice for a site written in that language. The trade-off is that the encoded form is unreadable when pasted into systems that do not decode it. Sites serving a mixed audience usually transliterate to Latin instead.

Frequently asked questions

Should I use hyphens or underscores?

Hyphens. Google treats a hyphen as a word separator and an underscore as a joiner, so best_free_tools is read as a single word while best-free-tools is read as three.

How long should a slug be?

Three to five words is a good target. There is no hard limit, but search results truncate long URLs and they are awkward to share.

Should I include the date in a slug?

Generally no. A date in the URL makes the content look stale and forces a redirect if you ever refresh the article.

Can I change a slug after publishing?

You can, but every existing link to the old URL will break. Always add a 301 redirect from the old slug to the new one, and expect a temporary dip in rankings.

What happens to accented characters?

They are folded to their base Latin letter — Café becomes cafe, Münster becomes munster — so the slug stays readable and safe in a URL.

Are stop words like a and the a problem?

They are not harmful, but they add length without meaning. Removing them usually makes a cleaner slug.

Do slugs affect SEO?

Only slightly and directly. Google has described words in the URL as a very small ranking factor. The larger benefit is clarity for people deciding whether to click.

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