Slug Generator
Convert page titles into lowercase, hyphenated URL slugs that are readable, safe in any browser and good for SEO.
🔒 Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to a server.
A good URL tells people and search engines what a page is about before they click it. example.com/cafe-creme-guide does that. example.com/p?id=8271 does not. This slug generator turns any title into a clean, lowercase, hyphenated slug you can paste straight into your CMS, and it can do a whole list at once.
How to use the slug generator
- Type or paste a title. For several slugs at once, put each title on its own line.
- Choose a separator. Hyphens are best for web addresses.
- Decide whether to remove stop words such as “a”, “the” and “of”.
- Optionally set a maximum length. The slug is cut at the last full word that fits.
- Copy the result or download it as a text file.
How the slug is built
Every line goes through the same steps:
- Lowercase everything, because URLs on many servers are case-sensitive, and mixed case causes duplicate pages.
- Spell out special letters, for example ß → ss, æ → ae and ø → o, and turn
&into “and” and@into “at”. - Remove accents by splitting letters such as é into e plus an accent mark and then dropping the mark.
- Drop apostrophes, so “beginner’s” becomes “beginners” rather than “beginner-s”.
- Replace everything else that is not a letter or digit with a single separator, and trim separators from the ends.
- Remove stop words and trim to length if you chose those options.
Worked example
Take the title “Café Crème: A Beginner’s Guide to French Coffee”.
- Lowercase and remove accents:
cafe creme: a beginner’s guide to french coffee - Drop the apostrophe:
beginner’s→beginners - Replace spaces and the colon with hyphens:
cafe-creme-a-beginners-guide-to-french-coffee - With stop words removed:
cafe-creme-beginners-guide-french-coffee - With a 40-character limit:
cafe-creme-a-beginners-guide-to-french
Similarly, “10 Tips for Better Sleep & More Energy!” becomes 10-tips-for-better-sleep-and-more-energy.
What makes a good slug
| Good practice | Example |
|---|---|
| Short and descriptive | /hiking-boots-guide |
| Contains the main keyword | /sourdough-starter-recipe |
| Lowercase, hyphen-separated | /email-marketing-tips |
| No dates unless they matter | /best-laptops rather than /2026/10/28/best-laptops |
| No session IDs or tracking codes | /pricing rather than /pricing?ref=nav&sid=8f2 |
Tips and pitfalls
- Set the slug once and keep it. Changing a published URL breaks links and can lose search rankings. If you must change it, add a permanent 301 redirect from the old address.
- Avoid dates for evergreen content. A year in the slug makes a page look stale next year, even after you update it.
- Check for duplicates. Two pages cannot share a slug in the same folder. Most CMSs add
-2, which looks untidy, so pick a distinct slug yourself. - Keep the keyword, lose the filler. “The ultimate complete guide to choosing hiking boots” works better as
hiking-boots-guide. - Non-Latin scripts are a choice. Modern browsers support URLs in scripts such as Arabic, Chinese or Cyrillic. This tool converts to Latin letters only, so for non-Latin titles you may prefer to write the slug by hand.
Frequently asked questions
What is a URL slug?
The slug is the part of a URL that identifies a specific page in a readable way. In example.com/blog/best-hiking-boots, the slug is best-hiking-boots. Content management systems such as WordPress usually create it from the page title.
Should I use hyphens or underscores in URLs?
Use hyphens. Google's own guidance recommends hyphens to separate words in URLs, because underscores can be read as joining words together. Underscores are fine for file names or code identifiers that are not public URLs.
Should I remove stop words from slugs?
Often, but not always. Dropping words like "the" and "of" makes slugs shorter and tidier. Keep them when removing them changes the meaning or makes the slug hard to read, for example in a song or book title.
How long should a URL slug be?
Short enough to read at a glance, usually three to six words. There is no strict limit for SEO, but long slugs get cut off in search results and are harder to share. The 60 and 40 character options trim at a word boundary.
What happens to accented letters?
They are converted to their plain Latin equivalent, so café becomes cafe and Kraków becomes krakow. A few letters with no accent-free form are spelled out, such as ß becoming ss and æ becoming ae.