This is a guest post by Sean Si.
When I say slugs, I do not mean the distant, unshelled cousins of snails.
In the internet, slugs are the URL-friendly version of your permalink.
See the URL of this webpage? That’s easily called a slug.
(Note from Ana: the URL of this post is “https://trafficgenerationcafe.online/url-slugs-important-seo-factor/”, where “url-slugs-important-seo-factor/” part is the slug)
Slugs Affect your Rank
Slugs are the first thing read by search engines. That should already give you an idea of how important they are.
Notice how Ana does it. She’s mindful of her slugs in a way that is always consistent with the topic and the post title.
URLs hold a specific weight in your search engine rankings and are also a key to your article’s keyword presence. Just as the title tag is important in on-site optimization, so are slugs – especially because people also look at the slugs in the search result snippet.
Slugs Affect People’s Attention
Notice how Google highlights the queried keywords in a website slug as it displays the search result snippet?
So when we talk about slugs, it’s not all about your site SEO.
It’s also about how well you entice the searchers to click on your link.
Do you think people will click your site when, for example, they’re looking for an article about ‘Different Kinds of Keywords’ and your URL slug says ‘how-to-babysit-a-20-year-old’ ?
Hmmm…
Heck no.
Optimizing your slugs
In trying to optimize your slugs to achieve a better search engine friendly URL, you only have to remember two things:
- Make sure your keywords are present
- Take away the stop words – these are the words: I, a, about, an, are, as, at, be, by, in, is, it, of, on, or, that, the, this, to, was, what, when, where, who, will, with, the
The reason behind taking away the stop words is that the search engines do away with them anyway. In cleaning your slugs from stop words, you’re doing the search engines a favor. My advice (if you’re a WordPress user) is to download and install the SEO Slugs plugin to automatically clean your slugs from stop words for you.
Slugs ain’t rocket science
Changing your slugs to a better, keyword-packed, eye-catching version is not exactly a piece of cake, but it ain’t rocket science either. In WordPress (I’m assuming most of the readers of Ana’s blog are WordPress users) you simply click on the ‘edit’ button right below the text area where you put your title.
If you are not using WordPress and perhaps have your own static website, it’s easy as changing the filename of your webpage and making sure it’s in-line with what the content of that page.
One last thing: never ever forget that it’s called ‘slugs’, not ‘snails’ okay? 
Tips for Keeps: Always, always be mindful of your slugs. It could be the only difference why your competitor is ranking one place higher than you.
Sean Si is an obsessive compulsive slugger and an SEO Marketing enthusiast. He talks more about slugs in his up-coming free, 28-lesson basic SEO course, which starts this December 1, 2010. Enroll before slots run out!
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{ 75 comments… read them below or add one }
SEO Slugs is a great plugin for Title Slug Optimization! I use it on my website.
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Aloha Ana, gosh I appreciate the clarification, I always wondered how slugs work. Thank God for women who don’t mind opening a can of jelly beans and making it all sweet for those of us, who find it sluggish to get started. Glad I came by and thanks for sharing! Mahalo, Lani
PS.. do me a favor, keep it going for those of us, who still need our hands held.:)
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Hi Sean Si,
I just learned few days back the term about “Slug” when I joined this new job. Most of the sites are on wordpress. I am also wanna to some more info about SLUG this post is helps me. Thanks for the Plugin also. And yes it is one of the important factors of on-page. Search Engine gives importance to it.
Great advice Sean and indeed a very important on-site SEO technique. In my case, I sometimes forget about this so I have this handy plugin called “SEO Slugs” and it works pretty well, or at the very least it removes all those less important “stop words”. Anyway, and as I said, great advice for the proper use of “slugs” or URLs.. Thumbs up
DiTesco invites you to read: The Best SEO Tips And Practices For 2011
Thanks DiTesco
SEO Slugs is a plugin that I also use for all my blogs. It’s a very handy tool in weeding out unnecessary stop words from the URL Slug
Sean invites you to read: PageRank Sculpting
Thanks Sean,
I now have a better understanding of my permalinks and have put this information into use.
Thanks Anna, Sean’s site is a great resource. I will be spending some time there, no doubt.
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Hey Sheila!
Thanks! Looking forward to hearing from you there!
Sean invites you to read: Effective Link building strategies
I couldn’t agree more with your post - that the url (permalink) along with the meta title of a post and the keywords in a headline are the real power in getting search engine traffic! The rest of the content in the blog post is relally the icing on the cake.
All the top bloggers are raving about a new Wordpress plugin which I just launched - Keyword Winner, it can help them do just that and what’s more it is all built into the Wordpress dashboard, as you post it suggests keywords based on competition, Google trends and monthly search volume using Google Insights. I highly recommend everyone uses it!
Dan Lew invites you to read: How To Make Money With Keyword Winner
Hey Dan!
Glad you agree with us on this! Will try to check your plugin for wordpress. Keyword winner is it? I wish you all the best for your launch buddy!
Sean invites you to read: Why your Copywritten Article isn’t Working
Hey Sean!
Awesome and clear post.
I noticed my old post (where i was really completeny a newbie on SEO), i had terrible URL slugs lol..
I am trying to apply it, although i always forgot to exclue the short words, like a, for, etc.
Will definitely look into it more.
Thanks for this awesome reminder.
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You’re welcome Kimi!
It’s never too late to change the slugs of your older posts
but then you can also leave those behind and just focus on the new ones - either way, at least now you know how valuable this on-site factor is.
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Sean,
If i change them, i guess i would loose some backlinks i have built to the post? and i have to wait for Google to reindex them again?
If yes, i guess i would leave them as it is. I have already tons redirect in my .htaccess =(
Thank you for the suggestion.
Kimi invites you to read: How To Get Facebook API Key
Hey Kimi!
Not necessarily… I think Wordpress automatically redirects the old URL to the new one so you won’t be losing anything
try it - try changing one of your old URLs to a new one and then type in the old URL in your browser - see what happens 
But if you’re not using Wordpress - then I’m not so sure.
My pleasure Kimi!
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Hi Sean,
Whew! One other reason to try to read through all the comments. I’m glad Kimi brought up the question I wanted to ask you.
Like Kimi, my oldest content has awful slugs. I started fixing them but then stopped, unsure of the impact it would have. Then I didn’t bother because, hello? that fluff is over four years old and probably needs to stay hidden. LOL
Anyway, going forward, I’ll try to be more diligent. But here is one additional question: since nobody sees the post until they click, couldn’t we save time by making slug-worthy post titles? It’s not always possible, but what are your thoughts on that?
Cheers,
Mitch
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Hey Mitch!
Perhaps you can better clarify your additional question to me? So I can better understand it?
Thanks
Hi Sean,
Let’s say I do a Google search on “Kinds of Keywords”. The results are as you have shown in the post. The slug appears to be “kinds-keywords-customer-defining-keywords”. That’s not a good title, of course.
However, suppose I do a Google search on “Colombian Coffee”. If you had a post that you initially titled Colombian Coffee, the default slug would be colombian-coffee. Therefore, you wouldn’t have to change it.
So, my question is, is this worth striving for, or is it an unnecessary process?
Cheers,
Mitch
Mitchell Allen invites you to read: Invest in the Best Make Money Blogs
Hey Mitch!
It depends on your title. If you want to target a vertical keyword that is related to your title (but apparently you can’t put it in your title anymore) then you can put it in the slug
That’s what I sometimes do.
It gives me a + space on a keyword that I want the search engines to notice.
Sean invites you to read: Keys to Using Effective Testimonials
Thanks, Sean. I will attend to this
Cheers,
Mitch
Mitchell Allen invites you to read: Invest in the Best Make Money Blogs
Hi Sean, I will second that, you did well with this post explaining, well done!
Dan Lew invites you to read: How To Make Money With Keyword Winner
Thank you for this post, I am going to start using this, I had wondered how to change the slugs because I haven’t ever been happy with the slugs being “archives” followed by a number.
Thank you!
Stacy
Stacy@Grow With Stacy invites you to read: How to Become More Productive Part One
You are very welcome Stacy!
I’m sure you’ll be surprised with the results of your new knowledge about slugs if you do apply it in your site. You can change it in your wordpress settings ->permalinks
Take away everything and just leave /%postname%/ as a custom structure slugs
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Sean, thank you for taking the time to explain that to me! It wasn’t working for me for some reason (maybe my free theme?) so I may have to manually type in my post titles for a while.
Stacy
Stacy@Grow With Stacy invites you to read: How to Become More Productive- Part Two
Hey Stacy!
Oh gosh! Really? No, even with a free theme it SHOULD work for you. But just in case, you should try it on perhaps the default theme and see if it works. After you’ve given time to troubleshoot it by trial and error, and if the problem REALLY IS THE THEME - then go change to Thesis theme (or Copyblogger’s Genesis theme for that matter) I highly recommend those for on-site SEO coding structure.
Sean invites you to read: Why people miss God-given opportunities
Hey Ana, thanks for sharing this great post of Sean’s!
Nice Sean, this post was easy to read, understand and start implementing right away.
Loved the “tips for keeps”.
Thanks again!
Susanna
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Hey Susanna!
You are very welcome!
As for the tips for keeps, I have more where that came from - haha! Happy slugging Susanna!
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Hey Ana & Sean,
Thanks for sharing this. I have been using this plugin for a while now and it’s great
All the best,
Mavis Nong
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Hey Navis!
You are veeeeeeeeeeery welcome!
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
A simple yet powerful post! I do mind my slugs because of all the reasons stated above. I just wish that those not taking advantage of it would take the chance to read this post so they’ll know how much they’re missing out on.
Hey Andrew!
That’s great! Glad you’re mindful of your slugs. We have to share the info to people who don’t know how powerful their URL slugs are to both search engines and to people. I’ve visited your blog and I believe you’re one of the authorities when it comes to giving people blogging and SEO advice
help me share the slug importance!
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Sean
You are making me blush!
Andrew
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Hahaha!
Just like to be very truthful and generous in commending people
and you definitely deserve it Andrew! Keep up the great work!
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Hi Sean and Ana,
Really useful information and clearly and well presented. I have been using the SEO Slugs plug in for a while and it does an excellent job.
~Marcus
Marcus Baker@network marketing Internet business invites you to read: Im Giving it all up
Hey Marcus!
Thank you! Glad you’re having fun with the easy-to-use plugin! Keep on optimizing your slugs buddy!
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Very important lessons on the URL slugs. I knew it was important, and knew I should be doing it, but I haven’t been. This has really given me a reason to take a round-turn on what I have been doing and try to do it right from here on out where it come to slugs.
Thanks for a great guest post Sean
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Hey Steve!
You are very welcome! I’m glad this made you think about optimizing your slugs from here on. I look forward to the changes in result of your slugging efforts!
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Hi Ana and Sean,
I have been using this plugin for a while, it works really well. If I wanted to change some slugs, what would happen to the links that are already out there on the internet, including shortened links, for example bit.ly links ?
Thanks for sharing your insights.
Take care
Oliver
Oliver Tausend invites you to read: Outsourcing For Network Marketers – A Foundation
Hey Oliver!
If you change the URLs of your published articles what will happen is that Wordpress will keep the old URL and it will set the old one to redirect and point to the new one. So you don’t have to worry about your shortened links and the ones already out
(that is, if you’re using Wordpress)
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Hi Sean,
wow, that’s cool. Thanks again for your advice.
Take care
Oliver
Oliver Tausend invites you to read: Outsourcing For Network Marketers – A Foundation
Hey Oliver!
My pleasure buddy! Anytime
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
I like my creative titles better than the “20 best tricks” type of slug, but I did do this on my last blog post and it got a whole lot more traffic and retweets. Go figure!
Nice job, Sean!
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Thanks Amy!
Congratulations! That’s great news! So I’m sure you’re all set on doing it for all other succeeding entries you’re going to have
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Hey Sean
I have been slugging for quite awhile using the WordPress plugin and it generally works okay.
But I do try to take a look and may modify it if the url does not make sense.
So much to do so little time
Peter
Peter Fuller MBA invites you to read: Long Term Unemployed on 60 Minutes - Are you feeling desperate
Hey Peter!
That’s great! Keep on doing what you’re doing and I’m sure you’ll find yourself cruising on search engine traffic in no time
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
The good news is that readable urls are not only useful for SEO purposes but also easier to read and remember for users than page urls including a long string of all kinds of random characters.
Yup! Very true Andreas
Thank you for pointing that out
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Good tips, Sean - this is something that I never bothered with, for years! It definitely pays to spend an extra minute, or two, on optimizing the URL of your post. I like the rule “titles are for humans, URLs are for search engines”
Hey Roy!
Soooooo glad that this entry was an eye-opener to you! And yes it definitely pays spending a MINUTE or TWO (which, is what compared to the results??). Know where to draw the line - all in all, URLs should be for humans too
it’s just a matter of balance I guess
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
I enjoy looking at my tracking statistics and seeing how many different ways people find my blog posts. This is due to using the exact information you provided in this post. This works and helps SEO efforts more than you can imagine.
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Thanks Rob!
Glad that your experience verifies my guest post here
share it with the world buddy!
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Hey Sean!
Great post on snails… I mean slugs
I really agree with you. Slugs are a very important part of SEO. Too many times I see people not taking advantage of slugs by using the post id slug (.com/?p=123).
Oh dear! I’ve not been taking away the stop words in my slugs! Thanks for the heads up Sean!
Cheers!
Gloson
Gloson invites you to read: It’s Not Really What You Say- but How You Say It
Hey Gloson!
Hahaha! Yep yep - it’s sad to see ugly slugs. Search engines don’t like it, people don’t like it. And for what? In exchange for a minute or two of fixing it?
Better get to work on those stop words Gloson. You don’t want me telling you that it’s the reason why your competitor’s ahead of you by one rank! (That’ll suck - a lot)
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Thanks for this “heads up” Sean & Ana. I have been aware of the importance of this in SEO, but you know how it is, sometimes you forget to check that all is still working properly.
I’ll be focusing more on “taking note” of my blog’s slugs in the future.
Stay inspired!
Michael
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Hey Michael!
It is our pleasure! Yeah we often forget the little details of SEO. We just have to be careful which ones - coz some are vital
Glad it lit a bulb on your head Michael!
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Another tip I learned from the gurus about the SEO slug is remove the date, category, etc out from your slug and make it short and sweet. They say that it’s more easy for readers to remember and link to your content. Short slug also have an advantage of be shown full in the SERP. What do you think about it, Sean?
Mike invites you to read: Why Guest Blogging Used To A Very Bad Idea For Me
Hey Mike!
Yes I definitely think that the shorter your URL slug is, the better. Remember that search engines love things organized, shorter, more concise and straight to the point. If your URL slug is laser focused on your keywords and content, you can be sure that you’ll be ranking higher than the one with a longer URL with dates and categories.
glad you mentioned that one Mike
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Hello Sean,
Thanks for the great tip about “slugs”. I often see people still using the default WordPress permalink structure of ?postid=XXX, and I shake my head and think about how much they’re missing out.
I’ll check out the plugin in too. So thanks for that tip as well.
Take care,
Wayne
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Hey Wayne!
Yep yep they surely are missing out - a whole lot! That’s exactly why I wrote this article. You’re very welcome! Do download it soonest! It’s a really easy-to-use plugin
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
I’m not sure about the other WordPress themes, but I use Thesis and Headway which give me the ability to have an URL that is different from my Title, both being different from the Title Bar.
I often use one Title for people reading the page and a separate Title for people reading the SERP. The URL can be keyword only, strictly for the algorithm.
By the time I’m done I have no idea what I actually said anymore
Rick
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Hey Rick!
That’s a good strategy! I also separate my from my post title. Although for the URL, I make it relevant to my coz it has to be consistent with the search result snippet that people will see in the SERPs.
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Hi Ana!
Wonderful post and great reminder. I didn’t know about the seo slugs plugin, I’ll have to check that out. I know my slugs are probably a bit cluttered! I’ll add them to my blogging checklist!
Thank you for the awesome tip.
Heather
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Hey Heather!
It’s never too late to start optimizing your slugs now
Try the seo slugs plugin - you’ve nothing to lose. Promise. 
Sean invites you to read: Facebook Connect Comments for Wordpress
Awesome, thanks for the tips!
Quick question: Is there a point where slugs become too long? Is there a character limit that you don’t want to exceed?
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Hey Tristan!
You are very welcome! Hmm I don’t think that there will be a point where slugs will become too long
1. Coz you remove the stop words
2. Coz your keywords should be focused and concise
3. Usually your slugs are your title
My advice: Don’t pack in too much keywords on your slugs so as for it not to look too long
Sean invites you to read: Facebook Connect Comments for Wordpress
Hi Sean,
That was a good read! Thanks for sharing! I recently discovered that having the right URLs on your articles plays an important role when it comes to search engine rankings. Considering that I’m on the blogspot platform, modifying those is a tricky task and there are some limitations. Still a good level of optimization is possible. After performing it, I actually saw a good boost in traffic throughout the next few days.
Daniel Sharkov@Blogging Tips invites you to read: Blogging Just for Money or Is There Something More
Hey Daniel!
That’s great! Glad you now have a frist-hand experience on the importance of optimizing your slugs. It’s tiny little details on your on-site optimization that make a huge difference at times. On site optimization is highly neglected and overshadowed by linkbuilding and off-site optimization nowadays…
Sean invites you to read: Facebook Connect Comments for Wordpress
Got it. Slugs, not snails.
I’m impressed you managed to avoid the subheader “Pull Out All the Stops” when you discuss stop words. I wouldn’t have been able to resist the pun!
Hey Andy!
Glad you got that all figured out haha!
Sean invites you to read: Facebook Connect Comments for Wordpress
Great post Sean,
I think this is too often overlooked, especially in the age of CMS platofrms that do it all for you.
I have always preached the importance of optimizing your permalinks for the right phrases. THis way you can write a clever title for the people (commentluv) but Google sees a VERY optimized title instead.
Nicely constructed post too I might add Sean
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Hey Alex!
Thanks! Thank you for your very kind words. And yes, these little details are often overlooked because people on the web just don’t have the time to fix every minute information on their website. Some people don’t realize that it’s tiny details like these that pump up your on site optimization.
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Hi Sean,
Nice Post. Very useful stuff.
I’m using seo slugs on one of my blogs and it’s really awesome.
Thanks for sharing this awesome post Sean!
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Hey Devesh!
You’re very welcome!
Glad it’s working well for you
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
Hey Sean & Ana,
Nice post - It’s good to see a clear explanation of slugs and their importance. It amazes me to see so many URL’s with extra ‘and’s’ and ‘it’s’ in them…
A lazy way to deal with slugs, at least for wordpress users is Joost’s ‘SEO Slugs’ Plugin which will automatically take out the small words from your title…
Thanks Sean for the post, and Ana for the host =)
Jym invites you to read: An Infinite Flow Of Network Marketing Leads
Hey Jym!
You are very welcome! Make sure to apply what you’ve learned here with your slugs! I usually just don’t leave it to my SEO slugs plugin - there are times that I really do edit my slugs just to make it look more attractive and user-friendly without taking away keyword presence.
Sean invites you to read: Facebook Connect Comments for Wordpress
Cheers Sean =)
I already am and it’s true, it’s worth taking a bit more time to tailor the URL by hand. SEO Slugs will help but the tips you’ve presented here certainly provide the best option…
As an example, the slug for my post mentioned in the ComLuv along with this comment is .com/network-marketing-leads/ - the other words are superfluous.
Thanks again!
Jym invites you to read: An Infinite Flow Of Network Marketing Leads
Yep yep!
It’s a win-win for you when you change the URL slugs, right?
You win in the search engines
You win with attracting people coz they see the relevance
For just a little more effort of changing it
Sean invites you to read: How to set your standards in life
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