Permalinks are the permanent URLs for your pages and posts in WordPress. Setting up a clean, SEO-friendly permalink structure helps search engines understand your content and makes your links easier for visitors to read.
Steps
- Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard
- Navigate to Settings > Permalinks from the left-hand menu
- Choose your preferred permalink structure. We recommend Post name for the cleanest and most SEO-friendly URLs (e.g. yourdomain.com/my-blog-post)
- Click Save Changes to apply
Available Permalink Structures
- Plain — Uses a query string format (e.g. ?p=123). Not recommended for SEO
- Day and name — Includes the date and post name in the URL
- Month and name — Includes the month and post name
- Numeric — Uses a numeric ID in the URL
- Post name — Uses only the post title. This is the recommended option for most websites
- Custom structure — Allows you to create your own URL format using available tags
Important: If you change your permalink structure on an existing site, any previously shared or indexed links may break. Consider setting up 301 redirects for old URLs to avoid losing traffic.