How to write a URL slug that still makes sense

A slug is the last part of a URL: /blog/write-a-url-slug-that-still-makes-sense. People read it. They paste it. They remember a fragment of it. Search engines use it as one of many hints. The job is to name the page, not to stuff it.

Rules I actually use

Lowercase, hyphen-separated, ASCII if you can. Drop stop words when the line still makes sense without them (“how-to-write-a-url-slug” is enough). Keep the words a person would say out loud if they were pointing at the page.

• Do not date-stamp a guide unless the date is the point. You will want to update the guide without changing the URL.
• Do not put the keyword in three times. Once is a name. Three times is spam.
• Do not use underscores. They vanish in underlined links.
• Do not change a slug after other sites have linked to it unless you add a 301.

What a slug tool should not decide

Text to Slug will turn a heading into a legal URL. It will not tell you that the heading was vague. “Final thoughts” and “update-2” become clean slugs of useless names. Write the title first. Then slug it. Then cut the slug down until it would still work as a filename.

Unicode and accents

Browsers can encode “São Paulo” in a path. Many older systems still break. I strip accents for slugs unless the whole site is in a language that needs those letters to be readable. “sao-paulo” is ugly and portable. Pick a rule for the site and keep it.