Convert any title or phrase into a clean, lowercase, hyphen-separated URL slug. Strip diacritics, optionally remove stopwords, and keep slugs under 60 characters.
your-slug-appears-hereBest practice: keep slugs under 60 characters, hyphen-separated, lowercase. Removing stopwords like “the” or “and” tightens the URL but isn't required — readability matters more than length for click-through rate.
Short (under 60 characters), lowercase, hyphen-separated, and built from descriptive keywords. Avoid stopwords when they don't add meaning, but don't sacrifice readability for length.
Hyphens. Google has historically treated hyphens as word separators and underscores as joiners — so "running-shoes" indexes as two words, while "running_shoes" indexes as one. Hyphens are the SEO-safe default.
Optional. Stripping them shortens the URL and can sharpen the keyword focus, but readability matters more for click-through rate. If the slug reads naturally with the stopword, keep it.
Indirectly. Short, descriptive URLs see slightly higher click-through rates in search results, which is a behavioral signal. Length itself isn't a direct ranking factor — Google handles long URLs fine.