URL Slug Analyzer
Audit any existing slug — or one you're about to publish — and get an A–F grade with specific issues to fix. Separator check, stop-word detection, keyword-match test, and more.
URL path after the domain (no leading slash).
Optional — keyword-match check.
Use this with
Related on-page & serp tools
Slug Audit Guide
Audit slugs before you publish — not after
Once a slug is live, changing it is painful — every inbound link breaks unless you set up a 301 redirect. This tool grades your slug before you publish so you can catch weak slugs early. Pair it with our Slug Generator to produce strong new slugs from scratch.
Length under 75 characters
Google truncates URLs past roughly 60–80 characters in search results. Long slugs also look spammy and reduce CTR. The 3–5 word sweet spot covers 95% of articles.
Hyphens only, never underscores
Google's been clear since 2005: hyphens are word separators, underscores are word joiners. 'my_blog_post' parses as one word; 'my-blog-post' parses as three. Use hyphens.
All lowercase
Mixed-case URLs create duplicate-content headaches on Linux servers where /My-Post ≠ /my-post. Lowercase everything and redirect mixed-case requests to the canonical form.
Drop stop words
Words like 'the', 'a', 'of', 'to' add length without adding SEO value. Stripping them produces shorter, cleaner slugs with zero ranking cost.
Keyword presence
URLs are a minor ranking signal, but they're also a CTR signal — searchers see the URL in the SERP and scan it for keyword matches. Include your primary keyword early.
Avoid special characters
Anything outside [a-z0-9-] needs URL-encoding (%20, %26, etc.) which hurts readability and increases broken-share risk. Stick to ASCII alphanumerics and hyphens.
Pro Tips
Once published, a slug should be permanent. Changing it breaks every inbound link. If you MUST change, set up a 301 redirect before removing the old URL.
Slug and title should share key words. Mismatched slug/title (e.g., title 'SEO Guide', slug 'marketing-tips-2026') confuses Google and users.
Dates in slugs (/2025/10/article) lock you into evergreen vs time-sensitive positioning. Use them for news, skip them for how-tos.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What grade should I aim for?
- B or better. An A is the platonic ideal — short, keyword-matched, hyphen-separated, all lowercase, no stop words. A B is pragmatic — maybe one stop word, maybe slightly long. C means you have room to improve; D or F means re-slug before publishing.
- Does the keyword need to be in the slug exactly?
- Close variants work. If your keyword is "meta description checker", slugs like "meta-description-length-checker" pass the check because the keyword appears as a substring. Plurals and minor variations are fine.
- Can I keep a stop word if it sounds natural?
- Yes — the tool warns, it doesn't block. "how-to-rank-on-google" reads better than "rank-google" and the stop-word penalty is minor.
- What about non-English slugs?
- Non-English slugs are fine as long as they stay ASCII (e.g., "como-hacer-seo"). The stop-word list here is English only, so stop-word checks won't fire. Length, separator, and case rules still apply.