Slug Generator
Convert text into clean URL slugs for SEO
How to use Slug Generator
Convert any text into clean, SEO-friendly URL slugs. Remove accents, spaces and special characters automatically. Free online tool.
What is a URL slug and why does it matter?
A URL slug is the human-readable part of a URL that identifies a specific page. For example, in flashutils.com/en/password-generator/, the slug is password-generator. Slugs are critical for SEO and user experience.
Common uses:
- Blog posts: Convert a title like "10 Best Password Managers in 2025" to
best-password-managers-2025for the URL. - E-commerce products: A product named "Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch (2024)" becomes
apple-macbook-pro-16-inch-2024. - CMS and static sites: WordPress, Jekyll, Hugo and similar platforms use slugs to generate page URLs from post titles.
- Multilingual content: Transliterate non-ASCII titles (Üniversite → universitete) for URL-safe slugs.
- File naming: Generate consistent, safe filenames for uploads and assets.
SEO impact: A descriptive slug (/best-password-managers) ranks better than a generic one (/post-12345) because it contains the target keyword and is easier for Google to understand. Keep slugs short (3-5 words), lowercase, and hyphen-separated.
Frequently Asked Questions
What characters are not allowed in a URL slug?
Slugs should only contain lowercase letters (a-z), numbers (0-9) and hyphens (-). Avoid spaces (use hyphens), underscores (Google treats them differently than hyphens), uppercase letters, accented characters (é, ü, ñ) and special symbols (&, %, #, etc.).
Should I use hyphens or underscores in slugs?
Hyphens. Google treats hyphens as word separators (like spaces), so 'password-generator' is read as two words. Underscores join words together — 'password_generator' is read as one word. Hyphens are the SEO standard.
How long should a slug be?
Keep slugs under 5-6 words or about 60 characters. Long slugs are harder to read and share. Remove stop words (a, the, in, of) unless they change the meaning significantly.
Should I include the year in a slug?
Only if the content is time-specific (e.g. 'best-tools-2025'). Including the year can hurt long-term SEO — you would need to update or redirect the URL each year. For evergreen content, omit the year.
Can I change a slug after publishing?
Yes, but you must set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Changing a slug without a redirect breaks existing links and loses accumulated SEO value.
Slug vs URL vs permalink vs handle
A slug is the path segment of a URL: /password-generator. A permalink is the full permanent URL: https://flashutils.com/en/password-generator/. A handle is a slug used as a username on social platforms (e.g. @flashutils). A canonical URL is the preferred version of a page URL when multiple versions exist (with/without www, with/without trailing slash). All of these benefit from clean, descriptive, hyphen-separated lowercase text.