If you pay any attention while interacting on the web or more so if you have dealt with the workings of WordPress, you have probably come across the term ‘slug’. What the heck is a slug? A slow slimy creature that leaves a GUI gooey trail anywhere it goes? No, err not on the web at least.
A slug is a few words that describe a post or a page. Slugs are usually a URL friendly version of the post title, but a slug can be anything you like. Slugs are meant to be used with permalinks as they help describe the content at the URL.
Example post permalink: http://cliftonhatfield.com/blogging-tools/
The slug for that post is “blogging-tools“.
What are slugs good for?! There are at least a couple great reasons to use slugs for your permalinks.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Google places a lot of weight on a web page’s URL when indexing websites into their searched databases. If your web page is about ‘slugs’ then having the keyword ‘slug’ in the page’s URL is a great idea. I will go into SEO more in depth in a later post.
- Easy to remember: It’s obvious that http://cliftonhatfield.com/blogging-tools/ is much easier to remember than http://cliftonhatfield.com/posts/post.php?post_id=321. It also helps people understand what the link may be about before clicking on it when they hover over the link to your web page and read the browser’s status bar.
So a properly formatted slug used in a permalink becomes a very simple and effective way to attract visitors and traffic to your website. If you are using WordPress as your publishing platform, it has great options to help you configure your permalinks and slugs for each post and page. Learn how to set your permalink structure.
If you have any questions, please comment below and I will give you my help.
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4 Comments and Pings on Salt won’t melt this slug
Great information. I’ve been told to change the URL but nobody explained why.
Thank You
Bill´s last blog ..Day 30 of 30 Day Challenge
Thanks Bill. I try my best to explain the WordPress blogging platform that so many internet marketers use. Do you have any questions about your blog?
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Blogging, Blogging, General, Wordpress News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.