What is a URL slug?
Andy Kostenko avatar
Written by Andy Kostenko
Updated over a week ago

A URL slug is the end part of a short URL, followed after the domain name. A link slug helps to improve website SEO. It is a brief description of the page, which lets users and search robots understand the content.

The correct slug optimization increases the website in ranking

1. Add key queries to a slug. By using keywords in a slug, you help search engines to index and rank page correctly. Users at once may guess the main idea of the web page.

2. Divide the words in a slug.There are two ways to make a slug readable:

  • Use the “-” symbol. The advantage of using a hyphen is that when visitors enter a link, they don’t need to press caps lock.

  • Use the Camel case method. This is the practice of writing phrases so that each word in the middle of the phrase begins with a capital letter, with no intervening spaces or punctuation. To make the most of this method, you need to turn on the case-sensitivity. Otherwise, users won’t get to the destination when they type the link as “IncreaseCtr” and “increasectr” mean different things

3. Optimize a slug length

Short slugs are easier to understand and process than long ones. During crawling and page indexing, search engines match the users’ search queries with the slug. If an exact match is found, that page will have an advantage over pages that use longer slugs.

Remember that URLs are displayed in search results, so short and clear slugs affect the CTR and page traffic positively.

With the Short.io shortening service, you can specify a length for slugs while automatic link creation. For example,

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