URL Slug Length: How Long Should Your Blog URL Be?

A URL slug is the part of a web address that identifies a specific page — everything after the domain name. For a blog post at cleartexteditor.com/blog/word-count-in-google-docs.html, the slug is word-count-in-google-docs. It's one of the smaller pieces of on-page SEO, but it's visible in search results, visible when a link is shared, and — unlike most other page elements — it rarely changes once a page is published, which makes getting it right the first time more valuable than for content that's easy to revise later.

The Practical Length Guideline

There's no hard technical limit on URL length the way there is a pixel-based cutoff for meta titles — a URL can technically be very long and still function. The practical guideline, based on both display behavior in search results and general readability, is 50 to 60 characters for the slug portion (not counting the domain and folder path). This isn't a rule Google enforces; it's the range that consistently displays fully in search results and remains easy to read when shared as a link.

Both examples describe the same post. The second isn't inaccurate, but it makes the actual topic harder to spot at a glance, both for a person scanning a search result and for Google evaluating what the page is centrally about.

Why Long Slugs Get Truncated in Search Results

Google displays the URL beneath the page title in search results, and like the meta title, it can be cut off when it runs long — typically shown with an ellipsis partway through, or Google may substitute a shortened, generated version of the path entirely. A truncated URL looks less trustworthy and less specific to a searcher deciding which result to click, even when the underlying page is exactly what they're looking for.

Words Worth Cutting

Filler words that don't carry meaning: "the," "a," "and," "for," "how-to" (when redundant with the rest of the slug), "guide-to," "complete," "ultimate," "everything-you-need-to-know-about." These phrases are common in blog titles because they sound engaging in prose, but they add length to a URL without adding information that helps either a reader or a search engine understand the page's topic.

Dates, unless the content is genuinely time-specific. Including a year in a URL (-2026) can make a page look outdated once that year passes, and for most evergreen content, it adds length without adding lasting value. This is a stronger case for dated content — breaking news, an annual report — but not for a reference post explaining a stable concept.

Stop words that repeat information already in the URL path. If the page already lives under /blog/, the slug doesn't need to repeat "blog" or "post" within itself.

What to Keep: The Core Topic Words

The words worth keeping are the ones that answer "what is this page actually about" as directly as possible — generally the same words that would appear in the H1 and meta title, trimmed to the essential nouns and the specific detail that distinguishes this page from a related one. For a comparison post, that might mean keeping both things being compared; for a how-to post, keeping the specific action and its object.

A good test: read the slug alone, with the hyphens mentally replaced by spaces, and ask whether it would make sense as a short, direct answer to "what is this page about?" If it reads like a natural, compressed description of the topic, it's probably close to right. If it reads like a sentence fragment padded with connective words, it has room to be cut.

Slugs and Keywords: A Minor Signal, Not a Loophole

Including the primary topic term in the URL slug is a minor, well-established ranking signal — but it's a small one, and stuffing additional keyword variations into a slug beyond what naturally describes the page provides little to no additional benefit while making the URL longer and less readable. The slug should describe the page accurately and concisely; it isn't a place to accumulate every related search term a page might rank for.

Changing an Existing Slug

Unlike a meta title or description, which can be edited freely with no side effects, changing a URL slug after a page has been live and indexed changes the page's actual address — any existing backlinks, bookmarks, or indexed search results pointing to the old URL will break unless a redirect is set up from the old address to the new one. For this reason, getting the slug right at publication is worth more deliberate attention than most other on-page elements, precisely because it's the one that's genuinely costly to change later.

Checking Length Before Publishing

Since slug length is measured in characters, the same quick check used for meta titles and descriptions applies here — pasting a candidate slug into a character counter confirms it falls within the practical range before the page goes live. This fits naturally into the same pre-publish routine covered in our post on checking every SEO character limit before you publish, which covers title, description, H1, and slug together as a single checklist rather than separate, disconnected checks.

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A URL slug is a small detail compared to the actual content of a page, but it's a detail that's both permanently visible and expensive to change once set. Trimming it to the words that actually describe the page — and cutting the filler that sounds natural in a title but adds nothing in a URL — takes a minute at publication time and avoids a truncated, less trustworthy-looking link showing up in search results for as long as the page exists.