Watch your blog slugging it out...
Higher search engine rankings, that’s what.
It’s amazing how many blogs, even the bigger ones that you would think should know better, don’t use this strategy when it comes down to high search engine ranking optimization.
For those of you who are not sure what a slug is, here’s a quick definition:
A slug is a few words that make up the URL for your post and best describe your post or page; your URL post title in other words.
For instance, the full URL (also called “permalink“) for this post is “https://trafficgenerationcafe.online/what-is-slug/“, where “what-is-slug/” is the slug itself.
Your slug is one of the ranking factors that the search engines use to determine the relevance of your post to a search query and can add a lot of weight to whether your post shows up on the first page of Google, the second, or none at all.
Let me give you an example.
The other day I was running an SEMRush report on my blog to see which keywords I am currently ranking for.
To my surprise, one of my posts was ranking for the keyphrase “list building tips“.
The reason I was surprised was because my post managed to get on the first page of Google out of some 99M results with not a single anchor text link, no keywords in the title or description - with just a keyword-rich slug “https://trafficgenerationcafe.online/list-building-tips/“.
I, since then, “fortified” my rankings by adding that keyphrase to the title and building some anchor text links to it, but initially it was nothing but the slug that got me there.
Here are some quick tips to help you to improve your slugs:
- Write them for search engines, not for people.
- Use your keywords - the fewer additional words you add to the mix the better.
- Don’t add stop words like “and”, “it”, “some”, “at”, etc.
- Use “-” as a separator between the words.
Marketing Takeaway
Slugs only seem to be unimportant when it comes down to search engine rankings.
However, you never know what will tip Google scale in your favor, so I strongly suggest you start paying closer attention to your slugs.
Are you taking advantage of your slugs? Comment to show me that you’re alive!
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This post brought to you by Ana Hoffman
Ana is the founder of Traffic Generation Cafe and wants you to know that her 7 Steps to Complete Search Engine Domination free SEO report = SEO Made Simple. Don't forget to pick up your own copy today - just click on the link above!
Ana has written 247 great posts for Traffic Generation Cafe.
A wife to a great husband, a mother to a beautiful and, no doubt, genius little girl, and a successful internet entrepreneur. I also devoted my life to Jesus Christ many years ago, and He remains my true priority, focus, and hope.
{ 64 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Ana.
Another simple & straightforward article, I have come across today.
Thanx. Really helpful.
Simply put.
TITLE: A catchy phrase built up from keywords
(to attract readers or people searching online for such an article.)
URL: domain/keywords (to attract search engines)
I guess, this is somehow the ultimate win-win combination …!!!
You’re welcome, Aniket. Agreed - it’s a great combination!
This is most important for those WordPress blogger who are still using the default permalinks setting which has virtually no value at all. For the life of my I don’t understand why they use that as the default system
Sire invites you to read: How Good Is The FlexSqueeze Theme, Really?
Yes, it makes no sense at all!
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: Ask Ana: What Would You Like to Know About Traffic Generation and SEO?
Ana,
Thanks for this great tip. I’d been fortunate to have a chat with an SEO guy for a large company when I started blogging and he gave me this tip. Some of the simple guidelines that you gave will help me to be even more specific with my slug “marketing” lol. Thanks! Great post.
You’re welcome, Steve. Thanks for stopping by.
Ana that is such a great tip. I would always just write my title and wordpress would automatically make the slug whatever my title was. This certainly made for some darn awful long URL’s. Nothing I can really do about those now, but moving forward I am going to start putting just my article keyword as the slug. Now that I know the URL and Title don’t have to be the same thing.
Great article.
Damon invites you to read: Consumers in Debt are easier to Scam!
Thank you, Damon. At least you know for future posts!
This is quite an interesting topic, Ana.
I have been fiddling around with some of my post urls whilst editing newer posts, and rewriting some of the older posts.
I was surprised with some of the results.
There were a few pages which after changing the title url(and doing some editing of the post) went up on page one for certain search terms.
I had the top three spots on page one for a certain search term(A little bit hard to explain how that happened) .
Only the big G has now taken top billing(Top spot).
The truth is, I do a fair amount of researching, editing, polishing etc. This probably was the culmination, of all those other factors after a period of time.
And I second the vote(From one of your other guests) that your theme(Thesis) looks great. And it’s very smooth(As in navigation wise).
Daniel invites you to read: How Long Should A Blog Post Be?
Thank you, Daniel. Interesting observations you have here regarding your experimenting with polishing and editing. Well done on the results!
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: 7 Creative Content Writing Ideas to Bring Your Old Content Back to Life
Really nice one Ana. Slugs are one of the few things you can write for SE and not for people.
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Thank you, Christian. It definitely is.
I agree that it is a good idea to optimise the slug to contain a phrase that you are targeting.
However, if the post title and slug are the same then the phrase will be targeted even better. In which case, the best thing to do is name the post well and leave the slug to mimic it (using /%postname%).
What do you reckon?
Heydon Pickering invites you to read: Pseudo-class Deception
Usually, you want your slug to be as short as possible, Heydon - not always as good of an idea for your post title, since it needs to be more descriptive to draw in the readers.
It’s not that difficult to change the slug.
And of course you are right: it’s always a good idea to include your keywords in the title anyway.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: How to Get the Facebook Crowd to Like You More
Hello,
First time I hear of slugs. Thanks for this great explanation.
I’m sure I’ll be back soon.
Thanks
Joy
You’re welcome, Joy. Hope to see you around soon.
Hi Ana - Thanks for this. Will change slugs going forward - is there any value in going back over posts and doing it retrospectively? Also, is there any value in having category name in there? Cheers Fiona
Fiona Cooper invites you to read: Keeping fit with kids – ha
Erg… is it possible the related posts (at the bottom of each post) was pulling from the category in the url? I seem to have broken it - have put category back in but still not working…… now off to trudge around in admin looking for where it’s gone pear shaped….. any ideas welcome
F
Fiona Cooper invites you to read: The Quest for Wisdom
Hi, Fiona - I saw your follow-up comment and then it disappeared on me, so I’ll try to answer your questions as I remember them.
Related posts plugin: it depends on which plugin you are using, but most of them have options to pull the related posts from categories or not.
Changing your permalink structure will certainly affect your links - before you do that, I would advise to install a redirection plugin that will automatically redirect the old permalink structure to the new one. The plugin that I use on my blog is simply called Redirection.
Let me know how it goes and if there’s anything I can help you with.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: WPSubscribers Review: How to Get Your Subscription Rates Soar Through the Roof with Facebook Connect
Slugs are great, and definitely not used as well as they could be. I am often amazed by large websites like Yahoo! answers that have very un-friendly SEO slugs. Still for the small wordpress build, you provided some great starting tips!
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Thank you, Nick. You are right, this is a simple way to do it.
I am extremely impressed with your writing skills and also with the layout on your blog. Is this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself? Either way keep up the nice quality writing, it’s rare to see a nice blog like this one these days.
Thank you, Maria. It is a paid theme called Thesis. It is easily customized and very flexible. Thanks for the nice words.
great job ana, i guess speak with your mind and don’t copy scape then u can get a high rank and your comment will be posted.. thanks for sharing this wonderful thoughts .
anne
That’s corrrect, Ella. Those are two great ways to get a good ranking.
My WP puts in the year and month ie. 2011/06/. Is there any reason to include this in the slug?
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That’s not critical, Kelly.
So Ana,
u say for post title for better seo ranking, how would i write the title for example “My name is Jack”
As is or do I put hyphons in between?
cheers
Jack Foley invites you to read: Trading Points – June 13- 2011
Put hyphen’s in between.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: 404 (Not Found) Errors: Do They Hurt Your Site?
So are you saying it’s perfectly fine to go back and change the slug on an old post? Is there any reason you wouldn’t want to do this? Thanks.
Of course the old page will no longer be found, so don’t do it to pages that are receiving a lot of traffic. On those that aren’t, you will probably receive more traffic.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: Friday Tips for Keeps: What’s in a Slug?
Hello Ana, am going to ask something little out of this topic, can you please interpret me this line “having H1 tag of a web page is one of the most important search engine ranking factors on a website.having duplicates of the same H1 tag or not using H1 tags is wasting a chance to better target a web page to a certain keyword.”
and also to tell me that how to do this?
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Adnan, when composing your post, you need to create a header with an H1 tag. You do this by highlighting the header you want to create, clicking on format and selecting “header 1″ from the drop-down. In the same way, you need to create H2, H3, H4 tags, etc. You get software that can help you do this too.
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Hey Ana,
Slugs are definitely an important part of your SEO strategy, well they should be. I am still shocked to see so many people using the default WP slugs, like /?p=89.
What are these people thinking? It is so easy to fix this and yet even some very popular blogs still do it. I can understand a newbie who doesn’t know doing this, because I was there just a few months ago.
Anyway, anyone who reads this can now fix their problem.
Thanks for sharing Ana and have a good one!
Ian Belanger invites you to read: First Page of Google In Under 24 Hours | Part 2 | Plugins I use
Thank you, Ian. I agree, it is so easy to do and worthwhile. Enjoy what’s left of your weekend.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: How to Increase Website Traffic Through Profitable Alliances
Thank you so much for this tip! I definitely did not understand this correctly and appreciate the clarification.
I’m glad you now understand it, Kim! Thanks for stopping by.
Hey Ana,
For permalinks in word press I had the choice of using the category name then the post title but I choose the websites name followed by the post title right away, I think this might be better for search engines to be able to pick up on the articles faster and easier not sure if it made a difference though.
I always try to keep it short and to have the title has as much meaning as possible.
Thanks for sharing.
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You can also edit the permalink in WP by clicking on “permalink” and edit it from there. It gives you more flexibility.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: WPSubscribers Review: How to Get Your Subscription Rates Soar Through the Roof with Facebook Connect
First time read about the anatomy of URL and its effect on ranking of the site.
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Well, then I am glad to introduce you to this interesting topic.
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Thanks for your definition about “slug” and your great tips.I will try to apply it on my blog.
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It is certainly worthwhile, Haley.
Editing out stop words is key, but you also want it to make sense. You never know when you might have to drop the link somewhere.
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Of course it must make sense.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: How to Increase Website Traffic Through Profitable Alliances
You and I say of course Ana, I’ve seen plenty that are merely 3-4 kw’s and make absolutely no sense at all when reading it.
Dennis Edell invites you to read: WordPress 3.2 is on it’s Way! Do You Meet the Minimum System Requirements?
Hi Ana,
I’ve noticed a lot of people using the blog post name as the slug, and I didn’t know that, as a blogger, we wielded so much power in what the permalink ultimately looks like. I know there are plug-ins for shortening long URLs on WordPress, and other sites can control that, as well, but I didn’t know (till you told me!) that you could control the slug.
The little pic you posted was quite adorable as well, and I don’t even like snails! =)
Delena
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I’m glad I was able to teach you something useful then. Yes, there are several ways in which to control it.
I like the pic too - it is pretty cute!
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: 404 (Not Found) Errors: Do They Hurt Your Site?
Did not know that was called a “slug”
Now I know the proper term.
Slug or permalink work interchangeably.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: How to Get the Facebook Crowd to Like You More
Thanks for the tip, Ana. I’ve just been using /%postname%/ as the permalink as so many people suggest.
Daniel invites you to read: 4 Powerful Strategies For Creating Persuasive Content That Turns Blog Readers Into Raving Fans
Glad this helped, Daniel. The post name often contains many unnecessary words that don’t help your ranking.
Thanks so much Ana. I was just letting WP build the slug for me. I’ll start optimizing them now. As always, you’re a star!
Hugs,
Melody
Thank you, Melody.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: Does Bribing Your Readers and Twitter Followers Really Work?
Hi Ana,
I totally agree that slugs are powerful SEO magnets.
I use a plugin called SEO Slugs for this and it seems to work well. However, I always double check the Permalink before I publish. There have been a few times when I’ve needed to adjust it to my liking.
I just do them manually, then there is no need for adjusting anything.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: 404 (Not Found) Errors: Do They Hurt Your Site?
I deleted that plugin after a while Bob, it just kept getting worse and worse.
Dennis Edell invites you to read: WordPress 3.2 is on it’s Way! Do You Meet the Minimum System Requirements?
There are plugins that help you make this easy to do without you coming up with this text. The slug is powerful and make your post get higher rankings.
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
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I just do them manually, then there is no need for adjusting anything.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: Does Bribing Your Readers and Twitter Followers Really Work?
As I implied to Bob, the plugin was off more then on, when I tried it on my blog.
Dennis Edell invites you to read: WordPress 3.2 is on it’s Way! Do You Meet the Minimum System Requirements?
Ana,
I have a pretty specific question for you. Do longer slugs hurt for SEO purposes?
For example, if you were going after the keyphrase, “What is a Slug” but also had discusses details of exactly how to create a slug and wanted traffic for that also, would a slug like:
/what-is-slug-how-to-create-slug
be less effective than your shorter and pithier slug for SEO purposes
-Steve
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Steve, shorter slugs are best. Note that I said “Don’t add stop words like “and”, “it”, “some”, “at”, etc.” - remove those - they are useless.
Look at the URL above - the slug is “what-is-slug”. So “what-is-slug-how-to-create-slug” is too long. While you should use keywords, you don’t want to jam in as many as possible. If you want the “create” bit in, then at least remove to the “how-to”.
Hope this helps.
Ana | Traffic Generation invites you to read: How to Increase Website Traffic Through Profitable Alliances
Cheers Ana,
You are a great resource for any blogger looking for traffic in any niche..
Jack Foley invites you to read: Trading Points – June-10-2011
Thanks, Jack.
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