If you are a blog owner, you are probably looking to change your WordPress site’s permalink structure, or you might realize that you need to change the permalink of a WordPress post.
Maybe you are restructuring your links, or simply made a mistake after you published your blog. These things can happen, but it isn’t the end of the world!
This article will go over how to change permalinks in WordPress by showing you how to change the permalink structure and how to change the permalink of a WordPress post.
So let’s begin!
What Is a WordPress Permalink?
The permanent URL of a post or page on your website is known as a permalink in WordPress. WordPress creates the permalink structure by default using the post ID, which can lead to URLs that are challenging to read and remember.
For instance, a post’s default permalink might be “http://yourwebsite.com/?p=123”, where “123” stands for the post ID.
WordPress lets you alter the permalink structure to make your posts’ and pages’ URLs easier to read and remember. You can select from a number of pre-built structures or design your own using tags like %postname% and %category%.
You can create URLs like “http://yourwebsite.com/example-post-name” by using a permalink structure like “http://yourwebsite.com/%postname%”.
By putting keywords in the URL, using a more descriptive permalink structure can help readers comprehend a post’s or page’s content just by glancing at it. It can also help your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) by letting Google know what your post is about.
NOTE: The URLs on your site will all change if you modify your permalink structure after your site has gone live, which means any links pointing to it can stop working. It’s crucial to have a plan in place to deal with any potential broken links or redirections to the new URLs.
How To Change Permalinks In WordPress
We are going to show you how to change the overall permalink structure of your WordPress blog first. After, we will show how to change a permalink for a single WordPress post.
How To Change The Default WordPress Permalink Structure
Changing the default permalink structure in WordPress is easy and can have a big effect on how your site is used and how well it ranks in search engines.
To change the default structure of permalinks, you need to first log in to your WordPress dashboard. Once you log in, you should see a list of options on the left side of the page.
Click “Permalinks” in the “Settings” menu. This will take you to the page where you can set up permalinks. On this page, you’ll see different ways to set up permalinks. “Plain,” “Day and Name,” “Month and Name,” “Numeric,” “Post Name,” and “Custom Structure” are some of the most common choices.
You can choose a structure like “Post Name” or “Custom Structure” from the list. If you choose “Post Name,” the URL will change to include the name of the post, like “http://yourwebsite.com/example-post-name.”
In the image below, our site has the “post name” picked for our WordPress permalink structure. In terms of readability and SEO, this is perhaps the best option for every blog owner to do.
When you create a new WordPress post, the permalink of that post becomes the post title.
If you choose “Custom Structure,” you can use the text field to enter a custom structure. You can make your own structure by using tags like %postname%, %category%, %year%, and %monthnum%. For example, if you type “/%category%/%postname%/” in the text field, your URLs will look like “http://yourwebsite.com/category/example-post-name/”.
Click the “Save Changes” button once you’ve chosen the permalink structure you want to use. This will change the structure of the permalinks for all of your website’s existing posts and pages, as well as any new posts and pages you add in the future.
NOTE: It’s important to remember that if you change the permalink structure after your site has gone live, it will change all the URLs on your site. This means that any links that point to your site may no longer work.
It’s important to have a plan in place to handle any broken links or redirections to the new URLs. You can use plugins like Redirection or Simple 301 Redirects to automatically change the old permalink to the new one.
Also, before making any big changes to your site, you should make sure to save a copy of it. This will make sure that if something goes wrong, you can get your site back to how it was before.
How To Change The Permalink Of A WordPress Post
In order to change the permalink of a post in WordPress, you will need to log into the WordPress dashboard of your website.
Once logged in, you should see a left sidebar with several options. Click on “Posts” to see a list of all of the posts on your website.
Find the post that you want to change the permalink for and click on it to open the post editor.
Once you have the post editor open, scroll down to the “Permalink” section, which is located directly underneath the post editor. Here, you will see the current permalink for the post, which is named the “URL”.
This is the URL, or permalink, you want to change in your WordPress post.
To change it, click on the URL link. This will open a text box named permalink, where you can enter the new permalink that you want to use.
Make sure to use only lowercase letters and numbers, as well as dashes or underscores to separate words.
For best SEO practices for WordPress links, always ensure you use the main keyword you are targeting as your URL. This helps Google understand and rank your content accordingly.
NOTE: Also, if you have internal links within WordPress posts with the old url, ensure you update those as well!
As you update it, the URL below the box will update in real time.
Once you have entered the new permalink, click on “update” to save the changes. This will save your permalink edit to your WordPress post.
NOTE: It’s important to note that changing the permalink of a post can affect any links to that post, so if the post has already been shared or linked to elsewhere on the web, those links may no longer work.
To avoid this issue, you can use a plugin like Redirection or Simple 301 Redirects to automatically redirect the old permalink to the new one.
Conclusion
We just covered how to change the permalink of a WordPress post in the most simplest way! Hopefully you got some value out of this post and it helped you update your WordPress post URL. Please let us know if you encountered any issues with this guide and we will be sure to help further!
