Segmented linear motors (SLMs) suffer from different disturbances like load force, detent force, friction and so on. To enhance the speed dynamic and steady-state performance of the SLMs, a two-degree-of-freedom (TDOF) sliding mode speed control (SMSC) strategy is proposed under the premise of reducing the current fluctuation in this paper. Firstly, a sliding mode speed controller is designed to reduce the speed steady-state error. The concept of TDOF control is introduced to this controller, which enable the control system to adjust the dynamic speed tracking performance independently. Secondly, to further reduce the impact of disturbances, a sliding mode disturbance observer (SMDO) is designed to estimate the total disturbance, and then the observed disturbance is used for feedforward compensation. This observer is based on the nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode method, which can ensure the fast convergence and weaken the chattering at the same time. Finally, experimental results have validated the effectiveness of the proposed method.