Keyword-in-URL / Slug Checker
A URL is read by people as well as crawlers. This scores yours on both counts.
Checks
Suggested slug
Only change a live URL if the page is new or performing badly — a changed URL needs a 301 redirect and loses a little equity in the process.
What the keyword-in-URL / Slug Checker does
A URL is a small piece of user interface. It appears in search results as a breadcrumb, it gets pasted into messages, and people read it to decide whether a link is worth clicking. Keywords in a URL are a minor ranking factor at most; readability is the part that actually pays.
This checker runs ten tests. Several are about mechanics: HTTPS, overall length, folder depth, and
whether the path contains capitals — which matters because most servers treat
/Page and /page as different URLs, quietly creating duplicates. Others are
about convention: hyphens rather than underscores, since Google has long treated hyphens as word
separators and underscores as joiners, so flat_feet can be read as one token.
The rest are about readability. Dates in the path make a page look stale the moment the year turns and make updating it awkward. Stop words such as the, for and of add length without adding meaning. More than about six words in a slug and it starts getting truncated in search results. Query strings are fine for tracking but should not be the indexable URL.
The suggested slug is built from your keyword, with accents flattened, punctuation removed, stop words dropped and the result capped at six words. Treat it as a starting point for a new page. For a page already live and performing, leave the URL alone: changing it means a redirect, a temporary dip and every existing link pointing at the old address.
How to use it
- Paste the URL and enter the keyword the page targets.
- Read the ten checks; amber items are conventions worth following rather than errors.
- Use the suggested slug for new pages.
- For existing pages, only change the URL if it is genuinely bad — and set up a 301 redirect if you do.
A worked example
A URL that fails six of the ten checks:
https://example.com/blog/2026/03/Best_Running-Shoes_For_The_Flat_Feet_Guide_FINAL.html?ref=navIt is 104 characters, four folders deep, contains capitals, mixes underscores with hyphens, buries
a date in the path, carries a query parameter, includes three stop words and ends in
FINAL — a filename that escaped from someone's desktop. Cleaned up:
https://example.com/blog/running-shoes-flat-feet47 characters, two folders, all lower case, hyphenated, no date, no parameters, and it reads as a
description of the page. In a search result it displays as
example.com › blog › running-shoes-flat-feet, which tells a searcher
exactly what they will get.
Frequently asked questions
Do keywords in the URL help rankings?
A little, and less than they once did. Google has described it as a very small factor. The larger benefit is that a readable URL earns clicks in search results and looks trustworthy when shared.
Should I change an existing URL to improve it?
Usually not. Changing a URL requires a 301 redirect, loses a small amount of equity, and breaks any link someone saved. Do it for genuinely broken URLs or during a planned migration; leave a merely imperfect one alone.
Hyphens or underscores?
Hyphens. Google has stated for years that it treats hyphens as word separators and underscores as joiners, so flat_feet may be read as a single token. Hyphens are also the overwhelming convention, so links look normal.
Should the date be in the URL?
Generally no. A dated URL makes an article look stale as soon as the year changes and makes republishing an updated version awkward. News sites often use dates deliberately; for evergreen content it is a liability.