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.

1. 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.
2. 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.

About Clifton Hatfield

I am a family man. My wife and I are both web developers and parents to our beautiful boys. I have been working with social networks since 2004 and blogging even longer. After building niche networks of over 400,000 members, I have genuinely gained knowledge of how they have grown over the years and have influenced the way people interact on the internet. My hobbies include writing Facebook Applications and Wordpress Plugins. In my free time, I love a glass of wine with my wife or playing in the yard our boys. Nothing means more to me than my family.

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