URL slug generator

What makes a good slug

Short, readable and descriptive. “/boiler-repair-leeds/” is better than “/services/page-id-4471/”. Drop words that add nothing, such as “and”, “the” or the year, unless they’re needed for sense.

Don’t change live URLs lightly

If a page already ranks, changing its URL resets some of the signals Google has collected. If you must change it, set up a 301 redirect from the old address to the new one and update your internal links.

Consistency helps

Pick one style and stick to it: lowercase, hyphens and a trailing slash or not. Mixed styles can create duplicate versions of the same page.

How to use it

1. Type or paste the title of the page you’re creating.
2. Press the button.
3. Shorten the result if it’s long. Keep the words that describe the page and drop filler such as “the”, “and” or a year.
4. Use it as the page address when you publish.

What it does

It turns your text into lower case, swaps accented letters for plain ones, replaces spaces and punctuation with hyphens, and removes hyphens from the start and end. “Boiler Repair in Leeds: Prices & FAQs” becomes boiler-repair-in-leeds-prices-faqs.

It doesn’t remove short words for you or check whether the address already exists on your site. Those are your call.

When a slug should change

Almost never, once a page is live and indexed. If you must change one, for example because the old address names a service you no longer offer, set up a permanent 301 redirect from the old address to the new one and update your own internal links. Then check Search Console over the following weeks to make sure the new address gets indexed and the old one drops out. Without the redirect, anyone following an old link or bookmark lands on an error page, and any value built up by links to the old page is lost.

Next step

Pick a pattern for your addresses and stick to it across the site, so pages for similar services follow the same format.

On the £99 plan we check for broken links and missing redirects every day, which is what usually goes wrong when addresses change.

A worked example

A page titled “Our Emergency Locksmith Services in Croydon (24 Hour)” becomes our-emergency-locksmith-services-in-croydon-24-hour. That works, but it’s long. A cleaner version is emergency-locksmith-croydon. It’s shorter, easier to read in a search result and won’t need changing if your hours do.

Keep slugs lower case and use hyphens rather than underscores, which is what the tool produces by default.

Related reading

See our site architecture guide for how URLs fit into the wider structure.

Other free tools