How to Create Custom Permalinks in WordPress (Comprehensive Guide)

After 15 years as a WordPress expert, I‘ve seen how important it is to optimize your site‘s permalinks.

Permalinks are the permanent URLs for all your pages and posts in WordPress. Having a well-structured permalink format enhances user experience, improves SEO, and establishes your brand.

In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll show you how I optimize custom permalinks for my clients‘ WordPress sites…

Why Permalinks Matter

With over 75 million websites powered by WordPress, the platform gives you the flexibility to customize your site‘s permalinks.

But many bloggers don‘t realize how much of an impact your permalink structure makes.

Here are 3 big reasons why you should take control of your WordPress permalinks:

1. Improve SEO

Search engines like Google give extra weight to keywords in clean URLs.

For example, https://example.com/wordpress-themes/ tells Google the page is about WordPress themes.

Compare this to ambiguous URLs like https://example.com/page-123/ or query strings like https://example.com/?p=123.

Optimized permalinks also prevent duplicate content issues.

2. Enhance User Experience

Descriptive URLs with relevant keywords help visitors better understand what a page is about before clicking.

For example, https://example.com/best-cheap-wordpress-themes-for-blogs/ sets clear user expectations.

Shorter, clean URLs are also easier to type and remember.

3. Establish Branding

Your permalinks act like an online storefront. A consistent URL structure reinforced your site‘s brand and topic authority.

For example, https://example.com/category/wordpress-beginner-tutorials/ signals this site is a leading WordPress resource.

Now let‘s dive into how to customize WordPress permalinks…

How to Change the Global Permalink Structure

The first place to start is your global permalink structure under Settings > Permalinks in the WordPress dashboard.

WordPress offers several common permalink structures out of the box:

• Default – Example: https://example.com/?p=123
• Day and name – Example: https://example.com/2021/12/sample-post/
• Month and name – Example: https://example.com/2021/12/sample-post/
• Numeric – Example: https://example.com/archives/123
• Post name – Example: https://example.com/sample-post/
• Custom structure – Create your own using %postname%, %category%, etc.

You can also modify the category and tag URL base prefixes on this screen.

For example:

Category base: /topics/
Tag base: /tags/

Based on my experience optimizing WordPress sites, I recommend:

• Choosing the Post name permalink structure
• Using a Custom structure with %postname% if you need to add categories, dates, etc.
• Keeping the category and tag bases short like /topic/ and /tag/

This creates clean URLs with keywords relevant to each post.

Don‘t forget to click Save Changes to update your permalink settings.

Pro Tip: Test different permalink structures using GoatCounter to see what performs best for your site‘s SEO.

How to Customize Individual Post URLs

While your global settings control the overall permalink structure, you may want to customize specific posts for better SEO.

For example, you can change the slug from:

https://example.com/this-is-my-post-title/

To:

https://example.com/better-slug-for-seo/

Here are two ways to change individual post or page URLs in WordPress:

1. Directly Edit the Permalink

When editing a post, expand the "Permalink" box:

Delete the auto-generated slug and update with your custom URL.

2. Modify the Title

A simpler option is to tweak your title to include the focus keyword.

For example, instead of:

Title: My Post Title

Use:

Title: Better Slug for SEO – My Site

WordPress will automatically generate the permalink based on your title.

I optimize 2-3 important posts per month using these two methods. This can really improve your keyword targeting and SERP rankings.

Pro Tip: Redirect old post URLs to the new version to avoid losing SEO equity. I use the Redirection plugin to handle this.

How to Change Category and Tag Permalinks

Aside from individual posts, you may want to edit your category and tag URLs:

Default URLs:

https://example.com/category/wordpress/
https://example.com/tag/beginner/ 

Optimized URLs:

https://example.com/wordpress-tutorials/
https://example.com/beginner-tips/

Here are the steps to customize category or tag permalinks:

1. Go to Posts > Categories or Posts > Tags
2. Click the "Edit" link below the term you want to edit
3. Change the slug and click "Update" to save

Focus on important categories like "WordPress" in the example above. Don‘t worry about customizing every single term URL.

Again, use redirects to avoid 404s from old category URLs.

How to Optimize Author Page URLs

WordPress automatically creates author pages at URLs like:

https://example.com/author/john

To customize the author base prefix or author slugs:

1. Install the Edit Author Slug plugin
2. Go to Users > All Users
3. Click "Edit" on the user account
4. Update the Author Base and Author Slug fields
5. Click "Update User" to save

For example:

Author base: /profile/
Author slug: john-smith

URL: https://example.com/profile/john-smith/

Creating descriptive author URLs boosts engagement. Visitors can quickly tell who wrote a post from the byline link.

Properly optimized author pages also rank better in search engines.

How to Create Completely Custom Permalinks

The options above allow you to work within WordPress‘s core permalink structure settings.

But what if you need to override the default WordPress URLs for specific posts, categories, tags, etc?

For example, maybe you want:

• Post URL: /2018/custom-slug/ instead of /%year%/%postname%/
• Category URL: /category-name/ instead of /category/category-name/

The Custom Permalinks plugin makes this possible.

To create a custom permalink:

1. Install and activate the Custom Permalinks plugin
2. Edit the post or term you want to customize
3. Expand the "Custom Permalink" section
4. Enter your new URL and save

This bypasses the default WordPress permalink structure for full control.

You can manage all custom permalinks under the plugin‘s settings:

Custom Permalinks is a powerful option if you need per-post flexibility beyond the standard settings.

Avoid 404 Errors When Changing Permalinks

One problem with adjusting your permalink structure is broken links from external sites.

For example, if you change:

https://example.com/sample-post/

to:

https://example.com/new-url-sample-post/

Any sites linking to your old URL will result in a 404 error.

The best way to fix this is by setting up 301 redirects from the old URL to your new permalink.

There are a few options:

• Use a redirection plugin like Redirection
• The redirect manager in SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math
• Change of Address specifically handles permalink changes

With proper redirects in place, any links to old URLs will get forwarded to the new permalinks. This prevents losing any SEO value from existing links.

Wrap Up

Optimizing your WordPress permalinks is one of the best things you can do for your site‘s SEO and usability.

Use this guide to:

• Choose the ideal global permalink structure
• Customize your post, category, tag, and author URLs
• Override default WordPress URLs with custom permalinks
• Set up redirects to avoid 404 errors from URL changes

Let me know if you have any other questions! Proper permalink settings are worth investing the time into your WordPress site.