Should slugs include the year?

Only if the year is part of the promise, like a seasonal guide. Years in URLs go stale and invite re-optimization debt later.

Hyphens or underscores?

Hyphens. Google treats underscores as word joiners, so a hyphenated slug is parsed as separate words.

Usually yes: the slug stays short and the keywords keep their weight. The tool removes common English stop words by default.

Type a headline and copy the slug it should have: lowercase, hyphenated, no stop words, no punctuation, ready to paste into your URL field.

slug

Updates as you type. Stop words like a, the, for, and are dropped.

Lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens only. No underscores, spaces or capitals.
Stop words removed: best-standing-desks-small-offices, not 10-best-standing-desks-for-small-offices-2026.
Keep it short. Google shows URLs in results, and short slugs get clicked more.

Google’s URL structure guidance says a site’s URL structure should be as simple as possible and use words people understand.