Put the most important keyword first
Search engines give slightly more weight to words that appear earlier in a URL. If your target keyword is "chocolate cake recipes" and your title is "15 Amazing Chocolate Cake Recipes for Beginners", the slug "chocolate-cake-recipes-beginners" leads with the keyword. Avoid slugs like "15-amazing-recipes-for-chocolate-cake" where the keyword is buried.
Aim for 3–5 meaningful words
The sweet spot for URL slugs is 3–5 meaningful words — long enough to be descriptive, short enough to be readable and shareable. "chocolate-cake-recipes" (3 words) is better than "best-easy-homemade-chocolate-cake-recipes-for-beginners-at-home" (9 words). Every additional word dilutes the keyword signal and makes the URL longer to type or share.
Avoid dates in slugs unless the content is inherently time-bound
Slugs like "best-seo-tools-2024" are problematic for evergreen content because they become outdated and require either URL changes (and redirects) or content that misleads visitors who see "2024" in 2027. If you update content annually, use a timeless slug like "best-seo-tools" and update the page title and content instead.
Use the truncate option for very long titles
Titles for articles are often naturally long — "The Complete Guide to Building a Personal Brand on LinkedIn Without Spending Money" is a fine article title but a terrible slug. Enable the 60-character truncate option, then check that the truncated slug is still meaningful and does not end mid-word. Manually adjust if needed.
Be consistent across your site
Consistency in slug style matters more than any particular choice. If you start with hyphens and stop word removal, maintain that throughout your site. Mixed conventions look unprofessional and can cause confusion in internal linking. Set your CMS's slug settings once and stick to them.
Generate the slug before writing the article
Decide on your target keyword phrase first, generate the slug, and set it before you start writing. This ensures the URL reflects your SEO intent from the start, rather than inheriting an auto-generated slug from whatever working title you had when you first saved the draft.