How To Change The Permalink In WordPress

Last modified: June 11, 2026

FAQ

Every URL on your WordPress site tells a story, and the format of that URL matters more than most people realize. The permalink is the permanent web address for each page and post on your site. When WordPress is first installed, the default permalink structure is often something like domain.com/?p=4321 or domain.com/2018/06/15/my-post-title/. Neither of these formats is useful to visitors trying to remember a link, and neither gives search engines any meaningful signal about what the page is actually about.

The good news is that WordPress gives you full control over your permalink structure from a single settings page. Changing it takes under a minute for a new site. For an established site, the process requires one extra step to make sure old links still work, but it is still straightforward. Getting this right early is one of the simplest technical SEO improvements you can make, and there is no good reason to keep a date-based or query-string URL structure if your goal is to rank well in search engines.

The most widely recommended structure is the Post Name option, which produces URLs like domain.com/how-to-bake-sourdough/. This format works well because the URL itself describes the content. When someone sees that URL in a Google result or in a shared link on social media, they immediately know what they are about to read. Search engines like Google also use the words in a URL as a lightweight ranking signal, which means a clean, descriptive URL can give your content a small but real edge over a cryptic alternative.

Date-based URLs cause a specific problem that often gets overlooked. If you publish a post in 2019 and the URL contains /2019/04/, a visitor in 2025 may skip clicking it because it looks outdated. The content might be perfectly accurate and useful, but the date in the URL creates a perception of staleness before they even land on the page. Removing the date from your URL structure eliminates this problem entirely and keeps your content looking evergreen.

If you are working on a brand new WordPress site that has never been indexed by Google, you can switch your permalink structure right now with no negative consequences at all. If your site is already live and has indexed pages, you will need to set up redirects from the old URL format to the new one. The easiest way to do that is with one of the best WordPress redirect plugins, which let you map old URLs to new ones without touching any code. This guide covers both scenarios, including what to do with WooCommerce product URLs and how to verify everything is working after the switch.

One thing many guides skip: when you change the global permalink structure, your individual post slugs do not change. The slug is the part after the final slash. A post with the slug my-seo-tips keeps that slug regardless of whether you switch from a date-based structure to Post Name. What changes is the structure wrapped around it. Before the change, the URL might be domain.com/2021/03/my-seo-tips/. After switching to Post Name, it becomes domain.com/my-seo-tips/. The slug itself stays put.

This also means you can change the permalink structure globally and still override the slug for any individual post. If a post title is long, like “How to Bake Sourdough Bread at Home on a Budget With No Equipment,” WordPress will auto-generate a very long slug from it. You do not have to keep that. In the post editor, you can click the permalink displayed below the title and type a shorter version, such as how-to-bake-sourdough. That shorter slug is what goes into the URL, and it will not be affected if you later change the global structure again.

Does Changing Permalinks Affect SEO?

Yes, changing your permalink structure on an existing site does affect SEO, at least temporarily. Any URLs that were already indexed by Google will become invalid after the switch. If you set up proper 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones, Google will follow the redirects, update its index, and eventually transfer ranking signals to the new addresses. However, “eventually” can mean days or weeks, so you may see a temporary drop in traffic after making the change.

The risk is much higher if you do not set up redirects at all. In that case, any old URLs that were indexed will return 404 errors, which means you lose all the ranking value those pages had built up. For a new site with no indexed content, this risk does not apply. You can change the permalink structure freely without any SEO consequences.

The upside of switching to Post Name outweighs the short-term disruption for most sites. Clean, descriptive URLs click better in search results, they make it easier for visitors to understand what a page is about before clicking, and they give you the ability to include your target keyword in the URL naturally. Many SEO professionals consider the URL slug a minor but real ranking factor, and there is no downside to optimizing it.

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Log Into Your WordPress Dashboard

Go to your website address followed by /wp-admin/ and sign in with your administrator username and password. You need to be logged in as a user with the Administrator role to access permalink settings. If you are on a managed WordPress host, some hosts offer a direct login button from their control panel, which saves you from typing the URL manually. Once you are inside the dashboard, you will see the black sidebar menu on the left side of the screen.

Open the Settings Menu

Look at the left-hand sidebar and find the Settings option near the bottom of the menu. Hovering over it will expand a sub-menu with several options including General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media, and Permalinks. If you do not see a Settings option, you may not be logged in as an Administrator. Editor and Author roles do not have access to this area.

Click on Permalinks

Click on Permalinks in the Settings sub-menu. This takes you to the Permalink Settings page, which shows you all the available URL structures for your site. At the top of the page, WordPress displays your current permalink structure. If you have never changed this before, it is very likely set to Plain (the query string format like ?p=123) or Day and Name. Both of these are worth changing for almost any content-focused website.

Choose the Post Name Option

On the Permalink Settings page, you will see six built-in options: Plain, Day and Name, Month and Name, Numeric, Post Name, and Custom Structure. For most blogs and content sites, Post Name is the right choice. It produces clean URLs that include only the post or page slug, like yourdomain.com/your-post-title/. The Day and Name and Month and Name formats include dates in the URL, which can make older content look outdated in search results. The Numeric option uses a post ID number, which gives no SEO benefit.

The Custom Structure option is worth understanding even if you do not use it. It lets you build a URL pattern using tags like /%category%/%postname%/ or /%postname%/. Selecting Post Name is actually the same as entering /%postname%/ in the Custom Structure field. The only reason to use Custom Structure directly is if you want something WordPress does not offer as a preset, such as including the post author or a custom taxonomy in the URL.

One practical thing to know: if your posts have long titles, the auto-generated slug can get unwieldy. A post titled “How to Bake Sourdough Bread at Home on a Budget” will generate the slug how-to-bake-sourdough-bread-at-home-on-a-budget. That works, but a shorter slug like how-to-bake-sourdough is cleaner and easier to share. You can shorten it in the post editor before or after publishing by clicking the permalink shown below the title. Changing an individual slug after publishing does trigger a redirect need for that specific post, but it does not require you to change the global structure again. Unless you have a specific reason to use a custom structure, select Post Name and move on.

Save Your Changes

Scroll to the bottom of the Permalink Settings page and click the Save Changes button. WordPress will confirm the change and will also automatically update your .htaccess file on Apache-based servers to make the new URL structure work. If your server runs Nginx instead of Apache, WordPress cannot update the server config automatically, and you will need to add the appropriate rewrite rules yourself or ask your host to do it. After saving, the page will reload and show your new structure selected and confirmed.

Redirect Your Old URLs

If your site was already live and indexed by Google with the old URL structure, you need to redirect the old URLs to the new ones. Without redirects, anyone who clicks an old bookmarked link or an old search result will land on a 404 error page. The most common way to set up redirects on WordPress is through a redirect plugin, which lets you create rules that match the old URL pattern and point visitors to the correct new URL. For large sites with hundreds of posts, a pattern-based redirect rule is much more practical than creating individual redirects one by one. Check your Google Search Console coverage report a few weeks after the change to make sure 404 errors are dropping and not increasing.

What About WooCommerce?

If you are running WooCommerce on your site, the plugin adds its own permalink settings that are separate from the standard WordPress permalink screen. To find them, go to WooCommerce, then Settings, then the Products tab, and look for the Permalinks section. Here you can set a product base slug, such as /product/ or a custom word of your choosing. You can also control the base for product categories and tags. Changing the WooCommerce product base after products are already indexed carries the same risk as changing the main WordPress permalink structure, so set up proper 301 redirects if you are making a switch on a live store. WooCommerce also handles the shop page URL separately, which you control by setting a page as the Shop page under WooCommerce, Settings, Products.

If you are running a WordPress Multisite installation, permalink settings work a little differently. Individual site admins within the network can still change their own permalink structure under Settings, Permalinks, but the base path for each site is determined at the network level. A subdirectory network gives each site a URL like domain.com/sitename/post-slug/, while a subdomain network uses sitename.domain.com/post-slug/. The network admin controls which setup is used during installation, and it cannot be switched after the fact without significant manual work. Within that constraint, the same Post Name recommendation applies: set each site to Post Name at the individual site level to keep post URLs clean below whatever base the network assigns.

Verify Everything Works

After saving your new permalink structure, click through several of your posts and pages manually to confirm the URLs look correct and the pages load without errors. Then check your homepage to make sure the main navigation links still work. If you have a sitemap plugin like Yoast SEO or Rank Math, visit the sitemap URL (usually domain.com/sitemap_index.xml) to confirm it has regenerated with the new URL format. You can also paste one of your new post URLs into a browser redirect checker tool to confirm it returns a 200 status code and not a redirect chain. If you see 404 errors on posts that should exist, the most common cause is a permissions issue with the .htaccess file. In that case, simply re-save your permalink settings, which forces WordPress to rewrite the file.

Switching to the Post Name permalink structure is one of the most impactful, low-effort changes you can make to a WordPress site early in its life. Clean, descriptive URLs are easier for visitors to read and share, easier for search engines to interpret, and easier for you to manage as your site grows. Once you make the change, try to stick with it. Changing your permalink structure repeatedly is bad practice because each change requires fresh redirects, risks broken links from other sites pointing to your old URLs, and can cause temporary ranking fluctuations while Google recrawls your content.

After you have updated your permalink structure and confirmed everything is working, keep an eye on your traffic through Google Analytics and your indexation status through Google Search Console. In Search Console, go to the Coverage report and watch for any spike in 404 errors in the days after the change. If you had inbound links pointing to old URLs, those 301 redirects should pass link equity to the new addresses, but it can take a few weeks for Google to fully process the change and update its index.

For new sites that have never been indexed, none of the redirect concerns apply. Set your permalink structure to Post Name before you publish your first piece of content and you will never have to worry about this again. For older sites, the one-time effort of setting up proper redirects is absolutely worth it compared to keeping a URL structure that works against your SEO goals every single day.

One final step that many guides skip: after making the change, go to Google Search Console and resubmit your XML sitemap. Your sitemap plugin will have regenerated it with the new URL format, but Google needs to recrawl it to discover the updated addresses quickly. In Search Console, go to Sitemaps, paste in your sitemap URL (usually domain.com/sitemap_index.xml), and click Submit. This gives Google a direct list of the new URLs and speeds up the reindexing process compared to waiting for Googlebot to find them on its own.

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