WordPress Permalink Structure: Best Practices for SEO

Your WordPress URLs are either helping you rank or silently hurting you. Most people never touch their permalink settings after installing WordPress. That’s a mistake I’ve seen cost sites thousands of organic visitors.

I’ve configured permalinks on hundreds of WordPress sites over the past 18 years. For client projects, personal sites, WooCommerce stores, multisite networks. The pattern is always the same: the sites with clean, keyword-rich URLs outperform the ones stuck on WordPress defaults. Every single time.

Here’s exactly how to set up your WordPress permalink structure the right way in 2026, and what to do if you need to change it on a site that’s already live.

What Are Permalinks in WordPress?

A permalink is the permanent URL for any page, post, or piece of content on your WordPress site. It’s what shows up in the browser bar, in Google search results, and in every link people share. The word “permanent” is the important part. Once Google indexes a URL, changing it without proper redirects breaks things fast.

WordPress gives you control over how these URLs look. You can have something ugly like yoursite.com/?p=123 or something clean like yoursite.com/wordpress-permalink-structure/. The difference between those two isn’t just cosmetic. It affects how search engines understand your content, how users decide whether to click your link, and how easy your URLs are to share and remember.

Every WordPress site has a permalink structure set in Settings > Permalinks. This structure acts as a template for all your content URLs. Pick the right one from day one and you’ll never think about it again. Pick the wrong one (or leave the default) and you’re building on a weak foundation.

Where Permalinks Show Up

Your permalink structure affects more than just blog posts. It determines the URL pattern for pages, custom post types, category archives, tag archives, and author pages. If you’re running WooCommerce, your product URLs follow permalink rules too. Basically, every public-facing URL on your WordPress site ties back to this one setting.

When someone shares your article on Twitter, they see the permalink. When Google displays your page in search results, the URL shown is your permalink. When another site links to you, they’re linking to your permalink. It’s the address of your content on the internet, and getting it right matters more than most people realize.

Why Permalinks Matter for SEO

Google has said for years that URL structure is a minor ranking factor. But “minor” doesn’t mean “irrelevant.” I’ve run enough tests across client sites to know that clean, descriptive URLs consistently correlate with better click-through rates in search results.

Think about it from a user’s perspective. You search for “best WordPress caching plugin” and see two results. One has the URL example.com/?p=4738. The other shows example.com/best-wordpress-caching-plugin/. Which one are you clicking? The second one tells you exactly what the page is about before you even read the title.

Search engines also parse URLs for context. Keywords in your URL give Google another signal about your page’s topic. It’s not the strongest signal, but combined with your title tag, headings, and content, it reinforces relevance. I’ve seen pages jump 3 to 5 positions just from cleaning up messy URL structures and adding proper redirects.

WordPress Permalink Options Explained

WordPress ships with six permalink options out of the box. I’ll walk through each one so you understand what they do, but I’ll be upfront: only one of them is worth using for most sites. The rest are either outdated, messy, or actively bad for SEO.

You’ll find these options under Settings > Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard. Changing this setting takes about 10 seconds. But understanding why you’re choosing a specific structure is what separates someone who knows WordPress from someone just clicking buttons.

Plain (Default)

The plain structure looks like this: yoursite.com/?p=123. It’s the WordPress default, and it’s terrible. The URL tells users nothing about the content. Search engines get zero keyword signals from it. It looks unprofessional and spammy.

I’m surprised WordPress still ships with this as the default in 2026. Every new WordPress install should change this immediately. I don’t care if your site is a personal blog, a corporate site, or a one-page portfolio. Plain permalinks are never the right choice. There’s no scenario where ?p=123 is better than a human-readable URL.

Day and Name

This structure adds the full date before the post slug: yoursite.com/2026/01/15/sample-post/. News sites and daily publications sometimes use this because it shows readers exactly when something was published. If you’re running a news outlet where timeliness matters, this can work.

For everyone else, it’s a bad idea. Here’s why: dates in URLs make evergreen content look stale. If someone finds your “How to Speed Up WordPress” article in 2027 and the URL says /2026/03/12/, they might skip it thinking it’s outdated. You also end up with longer URLs, which look cluttered in search results and are harder to share.

Month and Name

Similar to Day and Name but slightly shorter: yoursite.com/2026/01/sample-post/. It still has all the same problems. Your URLs get bloated with date information that adds nothing useful for most sites. The month and year in the URL don’t help Google rank your page. They don’t help users understand your content. They just make your URLs longer for no reason.

I’ve migrated at least 30 client sites off month-and-name permalinks over the years. Every time, we set up 301 redirects from the old dated URLs to the new clean ones. Traffic either stayed flat or improved. Not once did I see a drop from removing dates.

Numeric

The numeric structure looks like yoursite.com/archives/123. It’s marginally better than plain permalinks because at least it’s a clean URL path. But it still tells users and search engines nothing about what’s on the page. I’ve never recommended this to a single client. There’s just no advantage over using the post name.

Post Name (The Winner)

This is the one. yoursite.com/sample-post/. Clean, short, keyword-rich, and timeless. This is what I set on every WordPress site I build or manage. No dates, no numbers, no categories cluttering the URL. Just the domain and the post slug.

The post name structure (/%postname%/) gives you the best of everything. Your URLs are short enough to share easily. They contain keywords that help with SEO. They look professional in search results. They never go stale because there’s no date baked into the URL. And when you write a new post, WordPress automatically generates a slug from your title that you can edit to be even more focused.

I’ve been recommending this structure for over a decade now. Nothing has changed my mind. Google’s own URLs use a similar pattern. So do most major sites that rank well consistently. It works.

Custom Structures

WordPress also lets you build custom permalink structures using tags like %category%, %author%, %year%, and others. You might use something like yoursite.com/%category%/%postname%/ to include the category in the URL.

I’ll cover whether including categories makes sense in a later section. For now, know that custom structures exist but most sites don’t need them. Keep it simple with /%postname%/ unless you have a specific, well-thought-out reason to add complexity.

The Best Permalink Structure for SEO

I’m not going to hedge this. The best permalink structure for WordPress in 2026 is /%postname%/. Post name. That’s it. I’ve tested this across hundreds of sites, compared it against date-based and category-based structures, and the results are clear.

Clean, short, keyword-focused URLs perform best for organic search. They get higher click-through rates. They’re easier for other sites to link to. They age well because there’s no date making them look stale. If you’re starting a new WordPress site today, set this and move on.

Why Post Name Wins

Post name wins because it strips away everything that doesn’t add value. Dates don’t help users find your content. Category slugs add length without improving rankings. Numeric IDs are meaningless to humans and search engines alike.

With /%postname%/, your URL becomes a clean reflection of your content’s topic. If your post is titled “How to Speed Up WordPress,” your URL becomes yoursite.com/how-to-speed-up-wordpress/. That URL is descriptive, concise, and contains the exact keywords you’re targeting. Google likes it. Users like it. There’s nothing wasted.

I tested this directly on two similar client sites back in 2023. One used /%category%/%postname%/ and the other used /%postname%/. Same niche, similar content quality, comparable domain authority. Over 6 months, the post-name-only site had 12% higher average click-through rates from Google. The shorter, cleaner URLs simply performed better in SERPs.

Short URLs Beat Long URLs

There’s research backing this up. Backlinko analyzed 11.8 million Google search results and found that shorter URLs tend to rank higher than long ones. The average URL on page one of Google is 66 characters. Every extra folder, date stamp, or category slug pushes you further from that sweet spot.

Keep your post slugs tight. “WordPress permalink structure” is better than “the-best-wordpress-permalink-structure-for-seo-in-2026.” I manually edit every slug on my sites to remove filler words like “the,” “a,” “and,” “for.” You should do the same. Aim for 3 to 5 words in your slug. That’s the sweet spot I’ve found after years of testing.

Category in URLs: Pros and Cons

Some site owners like adding the category to their URL: yoursite.com/wordpress/permalink-structure/. It creates a visual hierarchy that looks organized. News sites and large publications sometimes benefit from this because it helps users understand site structure at a glance.

But for most WordPress sites, adding the category to your permalink creates more problems than it solves. If you ever change a post’s category, the URL changes too, and that means broken links unless you set up redirects. It also locks you into a rigid content structure. I’ve seen bloggers avoid recategorizing old content just because they didn’t want to deal with the URL changes.

My recommendation: skip categories in URLs. Use /%postname%/ and handle your site structure through internal linking and navigation menus instead. It’s simpler, more flexible, and performs just as well (or better) for SEO.

How to Change Permalinks Safely

If your site is brand new with zero indexed pages, just go to Settings > Permalinks, select “Post name,” and hit save. You’re done. No redirects needed because there’s nothing to redirect.

But if your site already has content indexed by Google, changing permalinks is a bigger deal. You need to handle it carefully to avoid losing traffic and breaking links from other sites. I’ve walked dozens of clients through this process, and when done right, it’s smooth. When done wrong, it can tank your traffic overnight.

Setting Up Redirects Before Changing

Before you touch your permalink settings, you need a redirect plan. Every old URL needs to 301 redirect to the new URL. A 301 redirect tells Google (and users) that the content has permanently moved. Google then transfers the ranking signals from the old URL to the new one.

The easiest way to handle this is with a plugin like Redirection or Rank Math’s redirect manager. If you’re using Rank Math for SEO (which I recommend), it actually detects permalink changes and offers to create redirects automatically. That feature alone has saved me hours on client migrations.

For large sites with hundreds of posts, I prefer handling redirects at the server level using .htaccess rules on Apache or nginx rewrite rules. Server-level redirects are faster and don’t add any PHP processing overhead. But for most sites under 500 posts, a plugin works perfectly fine.

Using the WordPress Settings Page

The actual change is simple. Go to Settings > Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard. Select “Post name” (which WordPress displays as /%postname%/). Click “Save Changes.” WordPress automatically updates your .htaccess file with the new rewrite rules.

After saving, visit a few posts on your site to make sure they load correctly. Check that old URLs redirect to new ones. Open an incognito window and try accessing an old URL format. It should redirect to the new structure without any issues.

Testing After Changes

Don’t just eyeball it. Run a proper check. Use Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to crawl your site and look for 404 errors. Check Google Search Console over the next few days for crawl errors. If Google tries to access old URLs that don’t redirect properly, they’ll show up as 404s in Search Console.

I also recommend submitting your updated sitemap to Google Search Console right after the change. This helps Google discover and index the new URLs faster. Most sites see the transition complete within 1 to 2 weeks. Larger sites might take a month.

When NOT to Change Permalinks

Here’s my honest advice: if your site has been running for years with a non-ideal permalink structure and you’re ranking well, think twice before changing. Yes, /%postname%/ is better in theory. But the risk of botched redirects on a site with thousands of indexed URLs might not be worth the marginal SEO benefit.

I had a client in 2024 with a 6-year-old site using /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/. They were ranking well for competitive terms. We discussed switching to /%postname%/ but decided against it. The redirect complexity for 2,000+ posts wasn’t worth the small potential gain. They were already ranking. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, especially on established sites.

Custom Permalink Structures

WordPress gives you building blocks called structure tags that let you create any URL pattern you want. These tags include %year%, %monthnum%, %day%, %category%, %postname%, %post_id%, and %author%. You can mix and match them to create custom structures.

Most sites don’t need custom structures. But there are a few situations where they make sense, and I want to cover them so you understand your options.

Including Categories in URLs

If you run a large site with clearly defined content silos, including the category can reinforce topical relevance. A site about cooking might use yoursite.com/desserts/chocolate-cake-recipe/ to show Google that the content belongs to a specific topic cluster.

The trade-off is flexibility. Once categories are in your URLs, changing a post’s category means changing its URL. You’ll need redirects every time. For sites with stable category structures that rarely change, this can work. For sites that are still evolving, it creates unnecessary headaches. My default recommendation remains /%postname%/ unless you have a compelling reason to add categories.

Custom Post Type URLs

If you’re using custom post types (common in portfolio sites, recipe blogs, or directory sites), WordPress generates URLs based on the post type slug. A custom post type called “recipes” would create URLs like yoursite.com/recipes/chocolate-cake/.

You can customize these URLs using the rewrite parameter when registering the post type, or use a plugin like Custom Post Type Permalinks. I usually configure this at the code level in the theme’s functions.php or a custom plugin. It gives you full control over the URL structure without adding plugin bloat.

WooCommerce Product URLs

WooCommerce adds its own permalink settings under Settings > Permalinks. The default product URL base is /product/, giving you URLs like yoursite.com/product/blue-widget/. You can change this to just the product name, a category-based structure, or any custom base you prefer.

For most WooCommerce stores, I recommend keeping the /product/ base or using a short custom base. Removing the base entirely to get yoursite.com/blue-widget/ can cause conflicts with page slugs. I’ve seen this break sites more than once. Keep a short prefix and you’ll avoid those headaches.

Multisite Considerations

WordPress Multisite adds another layer. Subdomain installations (like blog.yoursite.com) and subdirectory installations (like yoursite.com/blog/) each have their own permalink behaviors. The permalink settings on each subsite work independently, so you can set /%postname%/ on each one.

The main thing to watch for in Multisite is slug conflicts between the main site and subsites. If your main site has a page called “blog” and you’re running a subdirectory multisite, things can get messy. Plan your URL hierarchy carefully before setting up Multisite. Fixing permalink conflicts after launch is painful.

Common Permalink Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

After 18 years of working with WordPress, I’ve seen every permalink mistake in the book. Most of them are easy to avoid if you know what to watch for. Here are the ones I see most often.

Using Default Plain Permalinks

This is the number one mistake. I still see it on sites that have been running for years. Someone installed WordPress, never changed the permalink setting, and now their entire site uses ?p=123 URLs. Every day this stays unchanged is a missed opportunity for better SEO and user experience.

Fix: Go to Settings > Permalinks, select “Post name,” and save. If you have indexed content, set up 301 redirects first. But honestly, for most small sites with plain permalinks, the redirects from ?p=123 to /%postname%/ are handled decently by WordPress itself since the old query parameter format still resolves.

Including Dates on Evergreen Content

Dates in URLs make sense for news articles. They don’t make sense for tutorials, guides, reviews, or any content you plan to update over time. A URL like yoursite.com/2024/03/wordpress-speed-tips/ immediately looks two years old to someone seeing it in 2026. That hurts click-through rates even if the content is freshly updated.

If you’re running a blog with tutorials or informational content, keep dates out of your URLs. Use /%postname%/ and let your content stay timeless. You can always show the publication and update dates in the article itself without baking them into the URL.

Changing Permalinks Without Redirects

This is the mistake that causes the most damage. Someone changes their permalink structure, their old URLs all return 404 errors, and Google drops their pages from the index. I’ve gotten emergency calls from clients who lost 60% of their organic traffic overnight because of this.

Always set up 301 redirects before changing permalinks on a live site. No exceptions. Use Rank Math’s built-in redirect manager, the Redirection plugin, or server-level redirects. Test them thoroughly. Monitor Google Search Console for crawl errors after the change. Don’t skip this step.

Making URLs Too Long

Long URLs are hard to share, look bad in search results, and correlate with lower rankings. I’ve seen URLs like yoursite.com/2026/01/category/subcategory/the-ultimate-complete-beginners-guide-to-wordpress-permalink-structures-for-seo/. That’s a mess.

Keep your slugs to 3 to 5 words. Edit them manually when creating posts. Remove stop words like “the,” “a,” “to,” “for,” “and,” “in.” Focus on your target keyword and nothing else. wordpress-permalink-structure beats the-best-wordpress-permalink-structure-for-seo-in-2026 every time.

Not Editing Auto-Generated Slugs

WordPress generates slugs from your post title automatically. If your title is “12 Proven Ways to Speed Up Your WordPress Site in 2026,” the auto-generated slug becomes 12-proven-ways-to-speed-up-your-wordpress-site-in-2026. That’s way too long.

Always manually edit the slug to contain only your target keyword. For that example, I’d use speed-up-wordpress or wordpress-speed-tips. Short, clean, focused. Get in the habit of editing slugs before you hit publish. It takes 5 seconds and makes a real difference.

What to Do Right Now

If you’re setting up a new WordPress site, go to Settings > Permalinks and select “Post name.” Save it. You’re done. This takes 10 seconds and sets you up for success.

If you’re running an existing site with a different permalink structure, evaluate whether changing is worth it. For newer sites (under a year old, fewer than 50 posts), the switch is usually worth it. Set up redirects with Rank Math or the Redirection plugin, change the setting, and monitor Search Console.

For established sites with hundreds of posts ranking well, leave it alone unless your current structure is seriously hurting you (like plain ?p=123 permalinks). The risk of a messy migration outweighs the small SEO gain in most cases.

Permalinks are a set-it-and-forget-it decision. Get it right from day one and you’ll never have to think about it again. Get it wrong and you’re stuck with a painful migration later. I’ve seen both outcomes hundreds of times. Trust me on this one: /%postname%/ is the way to go.

Frequently Asked Questions