The SEO-Friendly URL Slugs Checklist: What to Verify Before You Publish

Run through this before you consider SEO-friendly URL slugs actually done:

1. Keep slugs short, lowercase, and hyphen-separated — avoid underscores, which some systems don't treat as word separators the way hyphens are.
2. Include the primary keyword naturally in the slug, but don't force in every variant — a slug isn't a place for keyword stuffing.
3. Never change a slug on a page that's already indexed and getting traffic without setting up a 301 redirect from the old URL.
4. Avoid stop words and filler ('a', 'the', 'and') in slugs — they add length without adding any meaningful signal.
5. Double-check this after any site migration or major redesign, not just at launch.

None of these individually take long. The value is in doing all of them, every time, instead of remembering most of them most of the time.

Pair this with the UTM tracking parameters checklist if you're doing a fuller pre-launch pass.

Product URL / Slug Generator runs through most of this automatically.

Everything in this guide runs directly in your browser — no signup, no install.