How To Change The Permalink In WordPress

Last modified: May 19, 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 If you publish a post in 2019 and the URL contains /2019/04/, a visitor in 2025 may skip clicking it because it looks outdated.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. This guide covers both scenarios, including what to do with WooCommerce product URLs and how to verify everything is working after the switch.

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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. 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.

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 a 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.

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