A URL slug or website slug is the last section of a URL address serving as the unique identifier of a webpage. Therefore, it follows your URL address and allows you to use your target keywords for SEO purposes, helping to improve your chances of ranking slightly.
“Slug” is a term used initially within media offices by journalists to refer to the short descriptions of articles.
Importance of URL Slug to SEO
Google confirms that the words in a URL help assess the page before Google does and has a light effect on its ranking factors by improving user experience (UX).
Therefore, instead of adding a numbered URL slug, adding the keywords – in our case, “URL slug” – helps you understand our post. In other words, it provides value, making it more likely that someone will click on the post.
Since the URL slug provides a summary description of the page, using a target keyword makes sense.
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Tips and Best Practices for Creating URL Slugs
A keyword tool can help you find the best target keywords for your URL slugs. First, however, here are some tips and best practices.
Make it Expressive
By describing the content of your page in the URL slug, your website’s URL becomes user-friendly. Your keyword is often the most accurate and shortest way to describe the content your user will find on your page.
Keep it Simple and Short
There is no limit to the text you can incorporate in your URL slugs, but the shorter they are, the easier it is for users to read them. Therefore, a URL slug that says, “five-minute-exercises” looks much better than one that says, “five-minute-exercises-for-a-better-looking-body-this summer.”
Rember, if your URL is too long, Google search results will truncate it. Even though this does not affect your SEO, it affects the overall look of the page snippet.
Keep Words Separate
Separating the words with hyphens (not underscores) increases readability, making it easier for users to understand what to expect in the content.
A good URL for clothes shopping tips won’t look like this “bestclothesshoppingtips.” Instead, it is much easier for the user to read these “best-clothes-shopping-tips.”
Don’t Use Underscores
Separators like underscores are often not correctly interpreted by search engines. We use the same example as above to make our point. It’s best to use hyphens in “best-clothes-shopping-tips,” rather than to present it like this “best_clothes_shopping_tips.”
Never Capitalize Words
Even when writing a proper noun, use lowercase characters because URLs are often case-sensitive. Therefore make it easier for someone to type in a URL manually by creating a URL slug that says “shopping-in-london” instead of “shopping-in-London.”
Don’t Use Special Characters
A URL slug should never include emojis or special language characters. Therefore, Google Search Central recommends only using American Standard Code for Information Exchange (ASCII). A good URL slug is “emoji-meanings” rather than “😊🚀.”
Make Sure the Slug Remains Relevant
Some bits of information in your content could change in the future, so it’s best to avoid including the year or number. Therefore, if your content provides 5 tips for writing URL slugs in 2023, you don’t need to have the number five or the year in the URL slug.
WordPress and URL Slugs
As the most popular CMS globally, you should know that you can easily create and change URL slugs. However, before creating or editing URL slugs, you must choose a “Permalink Structure” in WordPress “Settings.”
The most recommended one is the “post name” structure because it automatically creates a URL slug according to the title of a post or page. It also allows the editing of a URL slug.
You can also change the URL slug using the Yoast SEO plugin, which will tell you if you haven’t included your focus keyword.
Fact RoundUp
In this article, we learned that a website slug is a section following the web address of a page. Its purpose is to identify the page. Using words to do so is better than numbers for SEO.
We have determined that URLs or website slugs are essential for SEO since they improve UX. The words you use in your URL play a small role in your website’s ranking.
However, when you change your page’s URL slug, the URL address changes, meaning that users can’t reach it with the old address. Therefore, you must never forget to redirect the old URL to the new one with a 301 every time you change the website slug to prevent users from landing on an error page (404).
Bold Solutionz for Your SEO Rankings
When creating and changing slugs, remember that they have SEO value. However, the most common problems with slugs are length issues, using wrong separators, and adding too many parameters. You should also never forget to redirect to the new URL address when making changes; otherwise, you suffer potential traffic and link equity loss.
At Bold Solutionz we have the expertise to help meet all your on-page and off-page SEO needs.
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