Slug SEO Analyzer
Analyze URL slugs for length, keywords, stop words, and readability with an instant SEO score.
Updated
What is the Slug SEO Analyzer?
The Slug SEO Analyzer grades any URL slug against modern search-engine best practices and rewrites it into a clean, keyword-first version you can paste straight into your CMS. Drop in a full URL or just the slug — the tool extracts the last path segment, decodes percent-encoding, and scores it from 0 to 100 across ten weighted checks.
Under the hood it inspects:
- Length — characters and word count against Google's ~60-char display window.
- Case & separators — flags uppercase letters, spaces, and underscores (which Google reads as word joiners, not separators).
- Stop words & fillers — detects "the", "of", "in", and 40+ other low-value tokens that dilute keyword weight.
- URL-safety — surfaces unsafe characters, diacritics, and percent-encoded bytes that break sharing.
- Focus keyword placement — checks that your target phrase appears, and that it appears at the start of the slug where it carries the most weight.
- Dated numbers & duplicates — spots years like
2019that will age your URL, plus repeated words that read as spam.
Every finding comes with a one-line fix, and the built-in slugifier produces a lowercase, hyphenated, ASCII-safe suggestion capped at 60 characters. Use Batch mode to score an entire sitemap in one paste. Everything runs 100% in your browser — no upload, no account.
How it works
Each slug is graded on ten checks. Every check returns a severity (good / warning / issue) and a 0–1 sub-score, which is multiplied by the check's weight and averaged into the final 0–100 score.
| Check | Weight | What passes |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 15 | 15–60 characters |
| Word count | 10 | 3–5 words |
| Lowercase | 10 | No uppercase letters |
| Separator | 10 | Hyphens (-), never underscores or spaces |
| URL-safe chars | 10 | Only a–z, 0–9, - |
| Stop words | 10 | Zero filler words |
| Numbers & dates | 5 | No years like 2019 |
| Duplicate words | 5 | No repeated tokens |
| Boundaries | 5 | No leading/trailing - |
| Focus keyword | 20 | Present and at position 0 |
The weighted total maps to a letter grade:
- A — 90–100 (ship it)
- B — 75–89 (small polish)
- C — 60–74 (rewrite recommended)
- D — 40–59 (rewrite)
- F — 0–39 (start over)
How the slug is extracted
Paste a full URL and the analyzer:
- Strips the protocol (
https://) and any?query/#hash. - Splits on
/and takes the last non-empty segment, discarding the host. - Decodes percent-encoding (
%20→ space) so hidden characters are visible. - Runs the checks on the decoded slug.
The built-in slugifier
The suggestion engine normalizes text into a Google-friendly slug:
- Unicode-normalize (
NFKD) and strip combining diacritics —café→cafe. - Transliterate common Latin extensions —
ß→ss,&→and. - Lowercase everything.
- Replace every non-
[a-z0-9]run with a single-. - Optionally drop stop words (toggleable).
- Collapse repeats and trim leading/trailing hyphens.
- Truncate at 60 chars on a word boundary so you never end mid-syllable.
Batch mode
Paste one slug or URL per line. The analyzer scores each row and shows the top-weighted issue plus a suggested replacement with a per-row copy button — ideal for auditing a sitemap export or a spreadsheet of legacy permalinks before a migration.
Examples
Bloated blog slug
Full URL with stop words, uppercase, and a dated year.
Underscored slug
Google treats underscores as part of a word, not a separator.
Focus keyword check
Verifies the target keyword is present and appears at the start of the slug.
Already optimized
Concise, hyphenated, lowercase, keyword-first slug.
Frequently asked questions
What is a URL slug and why does it matter for SEO?
What is a URL slug and why does it matter for SEO?
The slug is the human-readable part of a URL after the domain — for example, best-running-shoes in example.com/blog/best-running-shoes. Google uses it as a ranking signal, users use it to judge relevance before clicking, and social platforms display it in previews. A short, keyword-first slug improves click-through rate and shareability.
How long should a URL slug be?
How long should a URL slug be?
Aim for 3–5 words and under 60 characters. Google typically truncates URLs longer than that in search results, and shorter slugs are easier to remember, cite, and paste. The analyzer flags anything over 60 as a warning and over 75 as an issue.
Should I use hyphens or underscores in URLs?
Should I use hyphens or underscores in URLs?
Always hyphens. Google has confirmed multiple times that it treats hyphens as word separators and underscores as word joiners — so learn_python is read as one token learn_python, while learn-python is read as two ranking tokens. Spaces are worse still: browsers encode them to %20.
Do stop words like "the", "and", "of" hurt SEO?
Do stop words like "the", "and", "of" hurt SEO?
They rarely hurt rankings directly, but they dilute keyword density, push important words past the truncation point, and add characters without meaning. Removing them almost always makes a slug tighter and clearer. The analyzer flags them but you can keep them if they're grammatically required.
Should I put the year in my slug?
Should I put the year in my slug?
No, unless the content is genuinely time-bound (e.g. tax rules for a specific year). A slug like best-laptops-2024 looks stale the moment 2025 arrives and forces you into either a redirect chain or a misleading URL. Prefer evergreen slugs and update the on-page content instead.
Is it safe to change a slug on a live page?
Is it safe to change a slug on a live page?
Only if you set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Without it you lose backlinks, lose ranking signal, and break any external references. The analyzer helps you get slugs right the first time so you never need to.
Does the analyzer send my URLs anywhere?
Does the analyzer send my URLs anywhere?
No. Everything runs entirely in your browser using client-side JavaScript. Slugs, focus keywords, and batch lists never touch a server, so it's safe for unpublished drafts, internal URLs, and pre-launch content.
What counts as "keyword at the start" and why does it matter?
What counts as "keyword at the start" and why does it matter?
The focus keyword is at the start when it occupies position 0 of the hyphen-separated words. Early placement carries slightly more weight for both users scanning URLs and search engines parsing them, and it survives truncation better. best-running-shoes-for-flat-feet beats shoes-for-flat-feet-best-running.
Can I analyze multiple slugs at once?
Can I analyze multiple slugs at once?
Yes. Switch to Batch mode and paste one slug or URL per line. You'll get a table with score, grade, top issue, and a copy-ready suggestion for each row — useful for site migrations, sitemap audits, or standardizing an existing blog archive.
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