Users of the CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever WordPress autoblogging plugins often encounter long URLs. These URLs are cumbersome and hard to read because they contain links to generated posts.
To solve this issue, it is important to understand how a post URL is formed in WordPress. The post slug, the part of the URL after the domain, plays a key role here. It is generated directly from the post title.
WordPress automatically generates a slug based on the title by default. If the title is long, the link will be too. For example, consider the following title:
“The Best Ways to Make Money Online Without Investment in 2026”
will become a URL like:
/the-best-ways-to-make-money-online-without-investment-in-2026/
In CyberSEO Pro, this behavior is due to the Post slug template. The template uses the %post_title% placeholder by default. The plugin takes the original title (imported from a feed or generated by AI) and inserts it without changes. Then, WordPress creates the slug based on the title. Therefore, a long title almost always results in a long URL.
Why slugs and titles are important for SEO
In WordPress, a post’s URL is formed as part of what’s known as a permalink, or a permanent link to the page. The slug plays a key role within this structure. It’s the part of the address that comes after the domain and identifies the specific post.
WordPress takes the slug from the title by default, so there is always a direct link between them. However, from an SEO perspective, it’s not only the presence of the slug that matters, but also its quality. Search engines use the URL as an additional signal to understand the page’s content, and users use it as a quick guide before clicking through.
A good slug typically focuses on relevant keywords and stays short and readable, reflecting the core essence of the page without any unnecessary clutter. For example, it’s better to use a short and clear URL than a long, cluttered one. This makes the link easier to understand and improves the user experience, which indirectly impacts SEO.
That’s why, when it comes to autoblogging tasks, it’s important to control not only the content and titles, but also how the slug is generated, whether manually or via AI.
Two ways to shorten URLs
There are two effective approaches, and your choice depends on whether you value conciseness or preserving the original title more.
The first option is to generate a short title right away. If the title is short, the slug will automatically be short as well, making this the most straightforward method. This is done directly in the Post title template using AI.
%gpt_prompt[Shorten the following title to 3-5 words: '%post_title%']%
The original title is fed into a language model, which returns a condensed version. As a result, you get a neat, short title, and WordPress generates an equally compact URL. This approach works well with both imported articles and fully generated content.
Both RSS Retriever and CyberSEO Pro (version 12.053 and later) support shortcodes in the Post slug template. So, as an alternative to the %gpt_prompt[]% placeholder, you can use any shortcode to generate text using AI, for example:
[ai_generate prompt="Shorten the following title to 3-5 words: '%post_title%'"]
The second option is to leave the title as is and shorten the slug separately. This is useful if you don’t want to sacrifice a long SEO title. In this case, the post title should contain the standard %post_title% placeholder, but separate logic is set in the Post slug template.
%gpt_prompt[Summarize into 3-4 keywords for a URL slug. No articles, no punctuation. Output only the text: '%post_title%']%
This prompt is designed to shorten the title and automatically remove articles, conjunctions, and unnecessary punctuation. We keep only the key words, making the URL as short and clear as possible for search engines.
Therefore, if you want maximum simplicity, it makes more sense to shorten the title itself. If, on the other hand, the full title is important (for example, for SEO or readability), it’s better to generate a short slug separately. In both cases, CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever give you full control over the process, and everything is handled at the template level without the need for additional plugins or manual editing.
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