There are Slugs in your URL

What is a Slug? Is it the slimly gross bug that lives in dead tree stumps? Yes…but the slug we are looking at is not that type of Slug. Slugs in SEO are the last parts of the URL that serves as a unique identifier of the page.

Underlined in Purple is the Slug in the URL. This can be a very valuable asset in SEO and can help gain a leg up on your competitors. Also, it can be helpful to users trying to find certain pages on your website. Google professionals confirm that words in URLs are ranking factors. This can be a valuable tool in your SEO toolbelt, but at the same time google professionals also say that it is a “lightweight one.” This means that it is not the most important thing in SEO and you should try to optimize other parts of your site first. URLs/slugs are supposed to be for the user not the search engine. Keywords in your URL is a big UX factor, because people perceive your site as more trustworthy, professional, and valuable when keywords are in your URL rather than just numbers.

5 Slug Best practices are:

1. Be Descriptive- Slugs make URLs more user friendly and they should give a clue into what the content of the page is about.
2. Make the slug concise and easy to read- Use fewer than five words in your slug. URLs are already super long and hard to read. Your slug should only help the user, not hurt them in the experience
3. Include the target keyword- The target keyword will make it easier for the user to understand what content is on the page and it helps the search engine figure out that your page is relevant to the search.
4. Separate words- Use separate words to enhance the readability of the URL.
5. Use hyphen, not underscores- Search engines cannot interpret other separators.

Slugs are very important to SEO and it is a useful tool.