What is a URL slug and why is it important?
A slug is basically the part of a web page’s URL that concisely and readably describes the content of that page . For example, if they have a page about how to plant roses, the slug could be “how-to-plant-roses.” Not only does this structure make it easier for users to understand what the page is about just by looking at the URL, but it’s also essential for SEO .
Good slugs are crucial for a website's organic ranking because mexico business email list they contain target keywords . When a search engine like Google crawls your websites, it analyzes the URLs for these keywords to understand the content of the pages. That's why a well-structured and descriptive slug can improve a page's visibility and ranking in search results.
But beyond SEO, slugs are also critical to improving user trust and experience . A clear, descriptive URL is more likely to be clicked by a user than a long, confusing one. Plus, a good slug can help prevent broken links and ensure that users are landing on the content they're actually looking for .
Now, although the example of the website for planting roses may seem simple, creating a quality slug requires serious work and planning so that this element is completely useful for increasing traffic to a page. That is why it is necessary to know what to take into account when creating a successful slug, which is precisely the topic we will discuss in the next section of the text.
Best practices for generating friendly URL slugs
Friendly URLs have become an essential component of SEO and user experience on a website. A well-structured URL is more than just a web address: it is a clear and understandable invitation for users and search engines to access relevant content .
However, as we have already said, it is not enough to be creative when adding a custom route to a specific page to the specific URL, nor to have a good synthesis capacity. Below we present a series of recommendations to generate slugs that not only optimize your positioning in search engines, but are also useful and clear for visitors and therefore offer a 360 service in a simple and fast way.
Use relevant keywords: The slug should contain keywords that describe the content of the page and are relevant to SEO.
Keep it short and simple: The more concise the slug, the better. It should convey the essence of the content without being too long. To do this, it is best to get to the point and, as we will see a few lines below, avoid certain connectors.
Avoid special characters and numbers: These can make the URL difficult to read and understand. It is best to stick to letters and hyphens.
Always use lowercase letters: Uppercase letters can cause duplication and confusion issues on some servers.
Separate words with hyphens: Hyphens (-) are preferred over underscores (_) because they are more readable and SEO-friendly.
Avoid stop words: Words like "and," "or," "of," and others do not add value to SEO and can make the slug unnecessarily long.
Be consistent across the website: Use a similar pattern for all your slugs, this helps maintain a uniform structure and improve navigability for users.
Avoid unnecessary repetition: For example, you don't need to include the word "blog" in every slug if it's already in the subdirectory.
Optimize for user intent: Think about how users might search for your content and reflect that intent in the slug.
Update slugs carefully: If you decide to change a slug, make sure to redirect the old URL to the new one to avoid broken links and SEO issues.
By following these practices you will not only improve the ranking of your websites in search engines, but you will also be offering a more user-friendly and consistent experience to users who visit your websites, who will be happy to return to them again and again.
Examples of optimized URL slugs in Laravel and Django
Laravel friendly urls
As we've already told you, a slug is a human-readable web identifier used to identify a resource in a URL in a friendly and SEO-optimized way. Generating and managing slugs is, in fact, essential in popular frameworks such as Laravel and Django.
In Laravel, a URL slug could be generated using the 'Str' package:
$slug = Str::slug('Article Title', '-');
This would convert "Article Title" to "article-title", creating a final URL like: domain.com/blog/article-title .
On the other hand, to create a URL slug in Django, the process is just as simple, but with different tools. You could use the 'slugify' package:
from django.utils.text import slugify
slug = slugify("Article Title")
This would generate a URL like: domain.com/blog/article-title .
Both frameworks provide efficient tools for creating slugs, ensuring URLs that are friendly to both search engines and users. The choice between Laravel or Django will depend on the specific preferences and needs of each developer and project, so it's up to you to decide!
However, wanting to optimize your web projects as much as possible does not mean that you should not take away from another very important point: making sure you have security features such as SSL certificates , which are essential for maintaining reliable encryption of your data and that of your visitors, such as bank card numbers or access codes. With GoDaddy you can be sure that you will never expose this type of information to prying eyes!
