Slug Generator
Turn a headline into a clean, readable URL slug — accents transliterated, punctuation stripped, stop words optionally removed.
Paste several titles, one per line, to generate a slug for each.
About the Slug Generator
The slug is the human-readable part of a URL after the domain. It is a small thing that lasts a very long time: change a published slug and every existing link to that page breaks unless you set up a redirect, so slugs are effectively permanent decisions made in a hurry.
A good one is short, readable and stable. It uses lowercase letters, digits and hyphens, because hyphens are the separator search engines have long treated as a word boundary while underscores historically were not. It leaves out dates and category names, which age badly and force a redirect the moment content is reorganised. And it drops the filler — the, a, and, of, how to — which adds length without adding meaning.
This generator handles the mechanics, including the parts that are easy to get wrong. Accented characters are transliterated rather than deleted, so café becomes cafe instead of caf. Ampersands become and rather than vanishing. Punctuation, emoji and repeated separators are cleaned up, and an optional length limit trims at a word boundary so you never end up with a slug ending mid-word.
How to use it
- Paste your titleThe headline, product name or page title you are creating a URL for.
- Choose a separatorHyphens are strongly recommended for SEO. Underscores and dots are available if a system requires them.
- Decide on stop wordsRemoving common filler words makes slugs shorter and more focused; keep them if the phrase needs them to read correctly.
- Set a maximum lengthOptionally cap the slug, trimming at a word boundary so it never ends mid-word.
- Review the resultThe slug appears with its character count and a preview of the full URL.
- Copy itPaste straight into your CMS's permalink field before you publish.
Features
- Accent transliterationé, ü, ñ, ç, å and dozens more become their closest ASCII equivalents rather than being dropped.
- Stop word removalOptionally strip common filler words to keep slugs short and focused.
- Separator choiceHyphen, underscore or dot, with hyphen recommended and set as the default.
- Length limitingTrim to a maximum length at a word boundary, never mid-word.
- Bulk modePaste many titles, one per line, and get a slug for each — useful for planning a content calendar.
- Full URL previewSee the finished address with your domain and path so you can judge it in context.
Who uses this tool
- BloggersSet a deliberate permalink before publishing, rather than accepting whatever the CMS generates from the headline.
- E-commerce managersCreate consistent, readable product URLs across a catalogue in one pass using bulk mode.
- DevelopersGenerate valid identifiers for static site filenames, documentation anchors and route paths.
- Content plannersTurn an entire editorial calendar of working titles into planned URLs in a single paste.
Tips worth knowing
- Three to five meaningful words is the sweet spot. Long slugs get truncated in search results and are painful to share verbally.
- Never put the date in a slug unless the content is genuinely time-bound — it makes evergreen content look stale and blocks reuse.
- Once a URL is published, changing it requires a 301 redirect. Decide the slug carefully before you hit publish, not after.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a good URL slug?
Short, lowercase, hyphen-separated, and made of the words that describe the content. Three to five meaningful words is typical. Leave out dates, category names and filler words, and include the primary keyword naturally rather than stuffed.
Should I use hyphens or underscores?
Hyphens. Search engines have long treated hyphens as word separators, while underscores were historically treated as word joiners — meaning my_blog_post could be read as one token. Hyphens are also the near-universal web convention.
Should I remove stop words like “the” and “of”?
Usually yes: they lengthen the slug without adding meaning or search value. Keep them when removing them makes the slug read wrongly or changes the meaning — “state of the art” loses something as “state-art”.
How does the tool handle accented characters?
It transliterates them to their closest ASCII equivalent, so “Crème Brûlée” becomes “creme-brulee”. This matters because raw accented characters in URLs get percent-encoded into unreadable escapes when shared.
Can I change a slug after publishing?
You can, but every existing link to the old URL will break unless you add a 301 redirect from old to new. Search engines also need time to transfer signals to the new address, so it is worth avoiding unless the current slug is genuinely wrong.
How long should a slug be?
There is no hard limit, but under about 60 characters is sensible. Long URLs are truncated in search results, harder to share, and rarely more descriptive than a well-chosen short one.