Components: URL Slug

Guides creation of SEO-friendly URL slugs for blog posts, articles, and content pages. Research on 11.8M Google results shows shorter URLs tend to rank higher; position #1 URLs average 50–60 characters.

When invoking: On first use, if helpful, open with 1–2 sentences on what this skill covers, then provide the main output. On subsequent use or when the user asks to skip, go directly to the main output.

Scope

• URL slug: The path segment after the base (e.g., ai-people-search in /blog/ai-people-search )

• Applies to: Blog posts, articles, guides, category pages, product pages

Best Practices

Length

Guideline Target

Slug length Under 60 characters total (including path prefix)

Word count 3–5 words

Principle Shorter = easier to read, share, remember; less truncation in SERPs; see serp-features

Example: "The Complete Guide to AI Search Engine for Finding People" → ai-people-search (3 words) or ai-search-finding-people (4 words), not ai-search-engine-finding-people-speed-discovery-outreach (9 words, 51 chars).

Format

Rule Do Avoid

Separators Hyphens (- ) Underscores (_ ), spaces, periods

Case Lowercase only Mixed case (causes duplicate content)

Characters Letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), hyphens Special chars

Stop words Remove when possible: the, a, and, or, to Keep when needed: "how-to"

Content

Rule Guideline

Primary keyword Include near start; one focus per URL

Descriptive Clear what page is about from slug alone

No keyword stuffing One keyword mention is enough

No dates Omit unless time-specific (news, annual roundups)

Non-ASCII Characters

Scenario Rule

Accented letters Convert to ASCII: é→e, ü→u, ñ→n, ç→c

Non-Latin scripts Use UTF-8 percent-encoding if required; prefer ASCII for compatibility

Example jalapeno not jalapeño ; cafe not café

Common Mistakes

• Copy-pasting full title: Summarize instead — long title → short slug

• Auto-generated IDs: /post/12847 — always customize

• Tracking params in slug: UTM, session IDs — use query params separately

• Changing without redirect: Always 301 from old to new slug

Slug Generation Workflow

• Extract primary keyword from title or target keyword

• Summarize in 3–5 words (don't copy full title)

• Remove stop words (the, a, and, or) unless needed for readability

• Lowercase, hyphenate, validate length < 60 chars

• Check uniqueness — no duplicate slugs site-wide

Examples

Title / Topic ❌ Too long ✅ Recommended

AI Search Engine for Finding People: Speed vs. Discovery ai-search-engine-finding-people-speed-discovery-outreach

ai-people-search or ai-search-finding-people

The Ultimate SEO Checklist for 2025 the-ultimate-seo-checklist-for-2025

seo-checklist-2025

How to Increase Website Traffic how-to-increase-the-traffic-to-your-website

increase-website-traffic

Best Running Shoes for Marathon Training best-running-shoes-for-marathon-training-in-2025

best-running-shoes-2025

Output Format

When creating or auditing a slug:

Recommended slug (3–5 words)

Character count (slug only)

Primary keyword included

Alternatives if multiple valid options

Reference: Alignify URL optimization

Related Skills

• url-structure: URL hierarchy, site structure; references this skill for slug conventions

• canonical-tag: When changing slugs, set up 301 redirects

• article-page-generator: Article URL slugs

• blog-page-generator: Blog post URL slugs

• glossary-page-generator: Glossary term slugs

• products-page-generator: Product page slugs

• customer-stories-page-generator: Case study page slugs

• resources-page-generator: Resource page slugs

• features-page-generator: Per-feature page slugs