Not many WordPress developers are familiar with the WordPress slugs and wonder what they are. It sounds gross initially but is not in reality. Besides slugs, there are WordPress plugins also. Usually, what happens is that search engines look for clues to figure out your content when they crawl a page on your site. 

Whether the content is about the title, headers, body text, meta description, image alt text, or URL. Out of all these, URLs are the first elements search engines crawl. Consequently, if you want to improve your SEO, you need to optimize your URLs as it is crucial. 

Ensure that your URLs should not be too long or contain any random numbers as these do not sound trustworthy. The main issue is the URL slug. 

Consequently, let’s learn more about the WordPress slug and the best practices to optimize them. Also, you’ll learn different ways to change them on your WordPress website. Let’s get started then. 

WordPress Slug 

The slug is the part of the URL which is editable on the WordPress website. It contains keywords at the end of the URL but those are separated by hyphens. In addition to this, the slug may also contain the day, month, numbers, time, and many more things which depend upon the site’s permalink structure. 

Before understanding slug, organizations and businesses should understand the different parts of the URL. The most common parts of the URL include the scheme, subdomain, second-level domain, top-level domain, subdirectory, and slug coming after the slash. 

What is the Difference Between WordPress Permalinks vs Slugs? 

Many people think that permalink and slug are the same as these terms are used interchangeably but there is a difference between both. The permalink refers to the permanent URL of the post or page. It does not change once the post or page gets live. 

As far as the slug is concerned, it is part of a permalink. It is the name of the post or page at the end of the permalink making it easier for people to know what your post is about. 

Where are Slugs Usually Found? 

It is usually your website where slugs are found. There are slugs on: 

Posts: Be it standard or custom, slugs are automatically generated. 

Tags: You can also edit slugs for the tags by going to the tag menu in your dashboard. 

Categories: Category slugs are similar to the custom post-type slug. 

Author Archives: Like others, the slugs for author pages can also be changed but in the case of plugins. 

Pages: Slugs are easily editable on pages. 

Significance of Slugs 

The primary significance of slugs includes that they are a key part of the permalink structure of your website. Moreover, these are extremely important when it comes to SEO. Due to the long and irrelevant slugs, it is important to optimize your slugs before you post or publish. 

Custom slugs are a great way to boost your SEO rankings and also let the readers know what to expect and what not to. 

Optimizing URL slug 

While building the website, the organizations should bear one thing in mind which is designing the website for humans and bots. It should serve as the guiding principle of organizations and marketers building websites. 

Consequently, this includes optimizing the URL slug in WordPress. Here are some of the best practices to optimize the URLs for search engines as well as readers. 

Not more than 1-2 keywords 

The marketers should get that keyword phrase in the URL that they want to rank in the slug. Doing so will enable the search engines and readers to determine what your page or post is about. 

In sync with the title 

Your URL slug should be closely in sync with the title of the page or your post. It should not be such that it ends up confusing the readers and search engines both. No doubt, it is not as simple as copying or pasting the title of the post. 

There is a limit of 60 characters for titles but these need to be longer than the slugs. Titles, on the one hand, make use of the use spaces and title cases whereas slugs, on the other hand, use hyphens or underscores between words. 

No unnecessary words 

The most common problem with the slugs is that they are not readable. But thankfully, you can make your slugs readable by omitting pronouns, prepositions, and articles. The problem is that search engines ignore these stop words. 

A good alternative is to ask the readers to fill in the gaps and make sense without certain words. Consequently, you should omit the use of such words. Every organization should bear these best practices in mind. 

Changing URL Slug in WordPress Website 

WordPress websites make use of the plain permalink structure as it does not contain any keywords and is not SEO friendly. But making your WordPress website SEO-friendly is of prime importance and for this, you need to change the default permalink structure. 

Simply go to permalinks in settings and select the other option. The best thing would be to select the “post name” as it is the shortest slug option while including the keywords. 

Marketers should go through the permalink settings before launching their website because if later on, you change your permalink settings, then you’ll have to redirect from your old URLs to new ones. 

Luckily, there are plenty of WordPress redirect plugins that make the process simple. You’ll receive a notification when your permalink will be updated so that you can edit the slugs of individual pages and posts on your website. 

Here are some of the steps you need to follow when changing the slug in the WordPress website. 

 

  • Go to the “all posts” section and select “add new” posts for creating the new draft. 
  • You need to edit the draft which you want to edit if you navigate to “all posts”. 
  • Choose the optional control next to permalinks and open the dropdown menu from the right-hand side of the screen. 
  • Once you are done with this, you can edit the slug and click on save a draft by going to the toolbar at the top. 

 

The organizations can repeat this process for the other pages of your website too. Doing so will ensure your website has SEO-friendly URLs to impress your site visitors and search engine bots. 

Wrapping Up

Not changing the URL slug of your website may hamper your business and might not bring the desired results. Consequently, organizations need to change it regularly to make it both search engines and users friendly.