URL Slug Generator (Slugify Text)

What Is a URL Slug?

A slug is the human-readable part of a URL that identifies a specific page or resource. In example.com/blog/how-to-bake-sourdough-bread, the bolded portion is the slug. Slugs are derived from page titles by lowercasing, removing punctuation, replacing spaces with hyphens, and stripping accents. They serve three purposes: (1) readability — users see what a URL leads to before clicking; (2) SEO — keywords in URLs help search engines understand content; (3) shareability — clean slugs are easier to share verbally or in print than UUID-laced URLs.

Slug Best Practices for SEO

• Keep slugs short: 3-5 words / 50-60 characters max. Search engines truncate long URLs in display, and short slugs are more shareable.
• Include the primary keyword: "How to Bake Sourdough Bread" → /how-to-bake-sourdough-bread — includes "sourdough bread," the likely search term.
• Remove stopwords carefully: "a", "an", "the", "of" add little value but can also help readability. Compromise: strip the truly meaningless ones, keep ones that aid comprehension.
• Use hyphens, not underscores: Google explicitly recommends hyphens. Underscores are treated as part of the word; blog_post reads as one token.
• Never change a published slug: changing creates 404s for every link to the old URL. If you must change, set up a 301 redirect from old → new.
• Don't include dates unless evergreen: /2024/01/article ages immediately; /article stays fresh forever. Same for category prefixes that may change.
• Lowercase always: mixed case creates duplicate URLs (Search engines treat /About and /about differently in some cases).
• Avoid query parameters for indexable pages: ?page=5 is less crawlable than /page-5.

Slugify Conventions by Framework

Handling Non-Latin Characters

Slugs for non-English content can be handled three ways:

• Transliterate to ASCII: "Hôtel" → "hotel". English-only audience; loses meaning for non-Latin scripts.
• Keep original Unicode (IRI): "京都" → "京都". RFC 3987 allows this. Modern browsers handle it; works well for native-language audiences but creates ugly punycode in copy-paste.
• Romanize: "京都" → "kyoto". Best of both — readable in English and pronounceable. Requires per-language romanization rules.

For international SEO: match what your target users search for. If Japanese users search in Japanese, keep Japanese slugs (Unicode URLs). If they search in romaji, romanize.

Slug Uniqueness Strategy

Two articles can have the same title. Strategies for handling collisions:

• Auto-suffix: first "hello-world," second "hello-world-2," etc. Simple but ugly. WordPress default.
• Date prefix: /2024/03/hello-world. Avoids collisions, but ages content visually.
• ID suffix: /hello-world-abc123. Used by Medium, Stack Overflow. Permanent uniqueness with readable slug.
• Category prefix: /recipes/sourdough + /tutorials/sourdough. Works if categories are stable.
• Random suffix: /hello-world-xyz. Privacy-friendly (can't enumerate URLs) but less readable.

When to Use Slugs vs IDs vs UUIDs in URLs

• Slug only (/post/sourdough): editorial content where URLs are forever. Best SEO.
• Slug + ID (/post/123/sourdough): permanent identifier + readable slug. Stack Overflow, Reddit pattern.
• ID only (/post/123): high-volume / auto-generated content where slugs don't add value (data export pages).
• UUID (/share/550e8400-...): unguessable URLs for shared content, password reset links, invitation tokens.
• Slug + UUID (/share/sourdough-550e8400): readable but unguessable. Used by Notion, Figma.

Privacy & Performance

All slug conversion runs in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is not sent to any server. The bulk mode processes thousands of items in milliseconds. Works fully offline once the page loads.