The slug is the part of the URL after the domain: 'how-to-reset-router' in a link. It is tiny, it is the keyword signal Google's robbers read first, and it causes broken links when changed carelessly.
Updated August 15, 2026, after a fresh review, with updated visuals and links.
Paste your headline below and get a clean, lowercase, hyphenated slug, with accent removal, stop-word dropping and optional number stripping.
Anatomy of a slug that ranks
Lowercase, hyphens, no spaces, no punctuation: servers treat '/About-Us' and '/about-us' as different pages on many stacks, and hyphens beat underscores because Google reads hyphens as word separators.
Keep the keyword, cut the scaffolding: 'how-to-reset-your-router-the-2026-guide' becomes 'reset-router-2026' or even 'reset-router' when stop words drop. Three to five words is the sweet spot.
Accents are the silent killer in multilingual sites: 'reseña' in a URL becomes '%C3%B1' breakage; the tool normalizes accents to plain letters automatically.
Worth remembering
- Never edit a live slug without a 301 redirect: every backlink and bookmark to the old URL then 404s.
- Keeping years in slugs ('guide-2026') helps click-through in fresh results but demands annual updates; choose per content type.
Frequently asked
Do stop words hurt in slugs?
They do not hurt, they just waste characters: shorter slugs with the core keyword outperform in click-through and readability studies.
Should slugs include the year?
For time-sensitive content, yes: searchers pick '2026' results over undated ones. Evergreen content reads cleaner without a year to maintain.
