“URL” is the link you input into your browser. The “slug” is the last part of a URL address that serves as a unique identifier for the page. For example: “https://binhbystories.com/writing/” is the URL, and “writing” is the slug of the URL. When writing a blog post on WordPress, you can find the slug in the sidebar, which you can edit to make the page more user-friendly and help your SEO in the process.

Here are some tips for optimizing your URL/slug. Consider them when you create a new page or a new blog post:

• Include primary keywords that are already in your page title. If your page H1 is “About Us,” then the page slug should be “about.”
• Avoid underscores and special characters; only include hyphens. Since WordPress already has a safeguard for this when it automatically creates slugs for your URLs when you create a new page or blog post, you should keep this in mind in case of importing posts or pages or when you manually edit the slug.
• Remove unnecessary words like “like,” “and,” “or,” “the,” etc. Trim down the URL to include only keywords while still making sense for visitors to glimpse through and understand the subject of the link they’re about to click on.
• Only use “/category/” for big sites with lots of content and hierarchy, not for smaller sites. You can edit this in WordPress Settings > Permalinks in the “Optional” section.

• Avoid dynamic data and dates, but sometimes it’s harder for search engines to crawl your website, harder to troubleshoot, and might not appear properly for end users.

This notes is written from my understanding while learning the lessons from Jeffrey’s SEO for WordPress course by Lytbox Academy, please check the course out and buy the course if you’re interested: https://lytboxacademy.com/seo-for-wordpress-course/