SEO-Friendly URL (Slug) Setup

Setting up SEO-friendly URLs for your site

SEO-friendly URL — readable, understandable page addresses without technical parameters. They affect CTR in search results (users see URL in snippet), link perception, and indirectly affect ranking.

Principles of good URLs

Rules:

• Only lowercase letters
• Separator — hyphen, not underscore
• Without technical IDs (if possible)
• Transliteration or semantic English translation
• Logical hierarchy reflecting site structure
• Without unnecessary stop words: the, and, or, for

Slug transliteration in Laravel

use Illuminate\Support\Str;

// Simple transliteration via iconv
function translit(string $text): string
{
    $text = mb_strtolower($text);
    $cyrToLat = [
        'а'=>'a','б'=>'b','в'=>'v','г'=>'g','д'=>'d','е'=>'e','ё'=>'yo',
        'ж'=>'zh','з'=>'z','и'=>'i','й'=>'y','к'=>'k','л'=>'l','м'=>'m',
        'н'=>'n','о'=>'o','п'=>'p','р'=>'r','с'=>'s','т'=>'t','у'=>'u',
        'ф'=>'f','х'=>'kh','ц'=>'ts','ч'=>'ch','ш'=>'sh','щ'=>'shch',
        'ъ'=>'','ы'=>'y','ь'=>'','э'=>'e','ю'=>'yu','я'=>'ya',
        ' '=>'-','_'=>'-',
    ];
    $text = strtr($text, $cyrToLat);
    return preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9\-]/', '', $text);
}

// In model
protected static function boot(): void
{
    parent::boot();
    static::creating(function (self $model) {
        if (empty($model->slug)) {
            $model->slug = static::generateUniqueSlug($model->title);
        }
    });
}

protected static function generateUniqueSlug(string $title): string
{
    $slug = translit($title);
    $original = $slug;
    $count = 1;
    while (static::where('slug', $slug)->exists()) {
        $slug = "{$original}-{$count}";
        $count++;
    }
    return $slug;
}

Routing

// Nested routes for hierarchy
Route::get('/catalog/{category}/{subcategory?}', [CatalogController::class, 'show'])
    ->where(['category' => '[a-z0-9\-]+', 'subcategory' => '[a-z0-9\-]+']);

Route::get('/catalog/{category}/{subcategory}/{product}', [ProductController::class, 'show'])
    ->where(['product' => '[a-z0-9\-]+']);

Permanent slug vs. generated from title

• Fixed slug — doesn't change on title edit (SEO-preferable, no broken links)
• Automatic — updates with title (needs automatic 301-redirect from old slug)

Store slug history for automatic 301s:

Schema::create('slug_redirects', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->string('old_slug')->primary();
    $table->string('new_slug');
    $table->string('model_type');
    $table->unsignedBigInteger('model_id');
    $table->timestamps();
});

URLs for multilingual sites

Structure options:

For Yandex, regional domains (.ru) are preferable. For Google — any option works if hreflang is set up.

Pagination

Preferred format: /blog/page/2 or /blog?page=2. Second variant is more convenient — doesn't require separate route, canonical is automatically correct.

Setup time: 1 day for slug system implementation with redirect history.