Free URL Slug Generator

A URL slug is the part of a web address that comes after the domain name and identifies a specific page in a human-readable way. For example, in "example.com/blog/how-to-write-better-urls", the slug is "how-to-write-better-urls". A good slug is lowercase, uses hyphens to separate words, contains no special characters, and clearly describes the page content. Slugs are important for both SEO and user experience.

URL slugs are a confirmed (though minor) Google ranking factor. A clean, keyword-rich slug helps search engines understand what the page is about and can improve click-through rates in search results because users can read and understand the URL before clicking. Best practices include: using your target keyword in the slug, keeping it short (3-5 words), using hyphens as separators, and avoiding stop words like "the", "and", "of" unless they are essential for meaning.

Use hyphens (-), not underscores (_). Google treats hyphens as word separators, so "best-coffee-shops" is read as three separate words. Underscores are treated as word joiners, so "best_coffee_shops" is read as one compound word. This is a direct recommendation from Google. While underscores will not break your URLs, hyphens are the universally accepted standard and give you a slight SEO advantage.

The ideal URL slug is 3-5 words or roughly 50-60 characters. Google displays up to about 60-70 characters of the URL path in search results before truncating. Shorter slugs are easier to read, share, and remember. Extremely long slugs dilute keyword relevance and look spammy. Focus on including your primary keyword and removing unnecessary filler words.

This slug generator strips all special characters (punctuation, symbols, brackets, etc.) and replaces spaces with your chosen separator. When transliteration is enabled, unicode characters like accented letters (e, u, o) are converted to their ASCII equivalents (e, u, o), and characters from non-Latin scripts are transliterated where possible. Characters that cannot be transliterated are removed to ensure a clean, URL-safe slug.

A URL-safe slug should only contain lowercase letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), and hyphens (-) as word separators. While URLs technically support many more characters through percent-encoding (like %20 for spaces), encoded characters make URLs ugly, hard to read, and harder to share. This tool ensures your slugs contain only these safe characters for maximum compatibility across all browsers, servers, and platforms.

Generally, no. Stop words like "a", "the", "is", "and", "of", "in", "to" add length without adding SEO value. The title "How to Build a Better Website in 2026" becomes the slug "build-better-website-2026", shorter, cleaner, and just as clear. However, keep stop words if removing them changes the meaning or makes the slug confusing. "The-who" and "who" mean very different things.

You can, but you must set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Without a redirect, you will lose all link equity (ranking power) built up by the old URL, break any external links pointing to it, and return 404 errors to visitors. If the page already ranks well, think carefully before changing the slug, the SEO risk may outweigh the benefit. Always redirect the old URL if you do make the change.

Short links like those created with Flyn use a separate, compact slug (e.g., flyn.to/abc123) that redirects to your full URL. The destination page should still have a clean, descriptive slug for SEO purposes. Short links are ideal for sharing on social media, in emails, and in print where space is limited, while the destination slug handles discoverability in search engines.

Yes, this slug generator is 100% free with no sign-up required. You can generate unlimited slugs, customize separators, set max length, enable transliteration, and track your slug history, all without creating an account. If you want to create branded short links with click analytics, you can sign up for a free Flyn account.