Notes on URLs

Practical guides on slugs, tracking parameters, encoding, redirects, and the parts of SEO that live in the address bar. Written alongside the tools — every guide links to the utility that applies it.

  1. The Bulk Slug Migration Checklist: Renaming 1,000 URLs SafelyMigrating a blog or product catalog to new URLs at scale — collision detection, redirect mapping, staged rollout, and the monitoring that catches breakage early.3 min read · slugs · migration · seo · redirects
  2. 12 URL Slug Best Practices for SEO in 2026Twelve concrete rules for writing URL slugs that rank, get clicked, and never need fixing — with examples of each done right and wrong.2 min read · slugs · seo
  3. URL Normalization: Trailing Slashes, Uppercase, and wwwIs /page the same as /page/? Does case matter in URLs? The normalization decisions every site must make once — and enforce with redirects forever.2 min read · urls · seo
  4. Open Graph Tags: How Links Become Cards on Social Mediaog:title, og:image, twitter:card — the complete guide to social link previews, image dimensions that work everywhere, and why your cache won't update.2 min read · social · serp
  5. How to Change a URL Without Losing SEO: A Step-by-Step ChecklistChanging a page's slug can preserve rankings — or destroy them. The exact steps: redirect, internal links, canonicals, sitemap, and what to monitor after.3 min read · seo · redirects · slugs
  6. 301 vs. 302 Redirects: Which One Protects Your SEO?Permanent vs. temporary redirects decide whether rankings transfer to the new URL. When to use 301, 302, 307, and 308 — and the myths about lost link equity.3 min read · seo · redirects
  7. Query Parameters and SEO: Taming Faceted Navigation and Crawl WasteSort orders, filters, and session IDs can multiply one page into thousands of crawlable URLs. How search engines treat query parameters and how to keep control.2 min read · seo · urls
  8. Canonical URLs: How to Tell Search Engines Which Version CountsDuplicate URLs dilute rankings. A practical guide to rel=canonical — how it works, when to use it, and the mistakes that make Google ignore it.2 min read · seo · urls
  9. fbclid, gclid, and Friends: What Tracking Parameters Do and How to Remove ThemEvery click ID and tracking parameter explained — what fbclid, gclid, ttclid, and utm tags actually record, and how to share clean links without them.2 min read · privacy · urls
  10. UTM Naming Conventions: A Framework Your Team Will Actually FollowClean campaign data starts with naming rules. A practical UTM convention framework with a starter vocabulary, governance tips, and examples.2 min read · utm · analytics
  11. Title Tag and Meta Description Length in 2026: The Real LimitsGoogle truncates titles around 600 pixels and descriptions around 160 characters — but rewrites most of them anyway. What the limits mean and how to write for them.3 min read · serp · seo
  12. How Long Can a URL Be? Limits in Browsers, Servers, and SearchThere's no single URL length limit — browsers allow ~2MB, servers reject at 8KB, sitemaps cap at 2,048, and search results truncate at ~60 characters.2 min read · urls · seo
  13. International URLs: Transliteration, Unicode Slugs, and Global SEOShould URLs use native scripts or ASCII transliteration? How Unicode behaves in URLs, what Google actually supports, and a decision framework per market.2 min read · slugs · international · seo
  14. Base64 vs. Base64url: Why JWTs Use a Different AlphabetStandard Base64 breaks inside URLs — its +, /, and = collide with URL syntax. How base64url fixes it, and how to convert between the two.2 min read · encoding · jwt
  15. UTM Parameters: The Complete Guide to Campaign TrackingWhat utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, and utm_content actually mean, how analytics tools read them, and the mistakes that corrupt your data.2 min read · utm · analytics
  16. Should You Remove Stop Words from URL Slugs?Removing a, the, and, of from slugs makes URLs shorter — but not always better. When stop-word removal helps SEO, and the cases where it backfires.2 min read · slugs · seo
  17. URL Encoding Explained: Why Spaces Become %20Percent-encoding turns unsafe characters into %XX sequences so URLs survive transmission. How it works, when to encode, and the double-encoding trap.2 min read · encoding · urls
  18. Hyphens vs. Underscores in URLs: Which Should You Use?Google treats hyphens as word separators and underscores as word joiners. Here's the history, the evidence, and the one case where underscores win.2 min read · slugs · seo
  19. The Anatomy of a URL: Every Part ExplainedScheme, host, port, path, query, fragment — a guided dissection of what each part of a URL does, with the edge cases that trip developers up.2 min read · urls
  20. What Is a URL Slug? Definition, Examples, and Why It MattersA URL slug is the human-readable part of a web address that identifies a page. Learn what makes a good slug, with examples and SEO guidelines.2 min read · slugs · seo