Creating clear and descriptive URLs is essential for WordPress SEO. Permalinks are the web addresses that identify individual posts, pages, and other content on your website.
Well-structured permalinks offer several advantages. Descriptive permalinks containing relevant keywords can help search engines understand and rank your content effectively, and user-friendly permalinks are easier for people to share and remember.
At WPBeginner, we have found that customizing permalinks to be more descriptive and user-friendly has improved our site’s SEO and user experience.
Permalinks are the permanent URLs of your individual blog posts, pages, and other archive pages on your WordPress website.
The goal of your permalink is to create an easy-to-understand URL structure for both humans and search engines. Here’s an example:
This URL is much easier to understand than URLs from the old days, which looked like this:
You can also use WordPress plugins to create completely custom permalinks for specific sections of your website that override the default WordPress settings.
With that being said, let’s take a look at all the options one by one. We will start with the default built-in options that come with your WordPress site.
For example, you might use the post’s title and category , plus the year when it was published.
Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page to store your changes.
We recommend using a URL structure that includes the post name in the URL. This makes your URLs more user-friendly and can improve your WordPress SEO.
Make sure you use SEO-friendly permalinks like this when you create a new WordPress blog or website.
However, if you have an existing website that’s already getting traffic from search engines, then changing permalinks can hurt your SEO rankings.
By default, WordPress uses as the base for your category URLs and for the tags pages.
Here are some examples:
Now, you will have a new category and tag bases active on your website, like these:
Once you set up your initial permalink structure, WordPress will use it as a template for all the links on your site.
However, you can also change the URL slug inside the URL structure for individual posts, pages, and custom post types to make it more SEO-friendly.
You can customize the slug part of the URL from the post edit screen inside the WordPress content editor.
If you are creating a new post or page, you must first click ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ to save your draft.
Once you are done, click on the ‘Update’ button to save the new permalink.
You can use this method for all post types, including WooCommerce products, membership sites, online courses, and more.
In the earlier step, we showed you how to modify the category and tag base prefix in WordPress. In this step, we will show you how to change the URL keywords for an individual category or tag.
WordPress will automatically create an author page URL for the different authors on your website. Author page URLs look like this:
In the example above, is the slug, and is the base.
The issue is that WordPress doesn’t come with an option to change the author URL base or slug. Luckily, you can change this in a couple of clicks using a WordPress plugin.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Edit Author Slug plugin. For details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
If you want to change the author permalink base, then simply go to Settings » Edit Author Slug.
All the above methods allow you to customize WordPress permalinks to a certain extent. However, they cannot help you create completely custom permalinks.
That’s because WordPress doesn’t offer this functionality by default.
Luckily, there’s a plugin that can help. If you want to override the default WordPress URL structure for specific sections on your site, then this is for you.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Custom Permalink Editor plugin. For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to open up the post where you want to create a custom permalink.
Similarly, you can also create custom permalinks for categories.
Or you can disable all of your custom permalinks by simply disabling the plugin.
If you have made changes to your permalink structure or author slug or created completely custom permalinks, then you may run into 404 errors.
To fix this, you need to set up permalink redirects from your old to new permalinks.
For more details on setting up permalink redirects, see our beginner’s guide to creating 301 redirects in WordPress.
Now that we have covered how to create custom permalinks, let’s answer a few frequently asked questions about the topic.
What are permalinks in WordPress?
Permalinks are the permanent URLs for your WordPress posts, pages, and categories. They determine how your content is displayed in a web browser’s address bar and on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Why should I create custom permalinks?
Custom permalinks can be more user-friendly and SEO-friendly. They can help people understand the content of your post from the URL itself. They can also improve your website’s ranking in search results.
Can I change the permalink for just one post?
Yes, you can edit the permalink for each post individually from the settings pane of the WordPress block editor.
What’s the most SEO-friendly permalink structure?
The most recommended structure is the ‘Post name’ option. This structure creates URLs that use the post’s title. This is easier for humans to understand and is favored by search engines.
What happens to my old permalinks if I change the structure?
When you change the permalink structure, the URLs for all your existing posts and pages will change as well. This can affect your SEO if you don’t set up 301 redirects.
Do I need to set up redirects if I change the structure?
Yes, we strongly recommend you set up redirects to ensure users and search engines land on the correct URLs after the change. Plugins like All in One SEO and Redirection can help you manage redirects easily.
We hope this article helped you learn how to create custom permalinks in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress or our expert picks of the best backlink checker tools to see who is linking to your site.