Permalinks — the URL structure WordPress uses for every page, post and archive — are one of those settings most owners touch once and never think about again. Which is exactly why getting them right from day one matters. A badly chosen permalink structure burdens you with ugly URLs that hurt SEO, look unprofessional when shared, and become a logistical nightmare to fix once Google has indexed thousands of them. This guide walks through every available structure, explains why Post name is the right choice for 99% of UK sites, and covers the special care needed when changing permalinks on a site that is already live.
What permalinks are and why they matter · Every permalink structure explained · Why Post name is the best default · Customising category and tag bases · Changing permalinks on a live site without breaking SEO · Editing individual slugs · Permalinks and SEO plugins · Permalinks for WooCommerce products and categories · Permalink troubleshooting · Frequently asked questions
A permalink ("permanent link") is the public URL of a piece of content — a page, a post, a category archive, a tag archive, a WooCommerce product, a custom post type. When someone bookmarks a page, shares it on social media, links to it from another website or types it into a browser, the permalink is what they use.
Because permalinks are supposed to be permanent, picking the wrong structure has compounding consequences. Every post you publish is assigned a URL based on the current setting; every external site that links to that post references that URL; every Google index entry memorises it. Change the structure later and every one of those links breaks unless you set up redirects.
Good permalinks do three things:
yourdomain.co.uk/about-us/ is self-explanatory. yourdomain.co.uk/?p=142 is not.WordPress gives you full control over permalink structure through Settings > Permalinks. Configure it before publishing your first piece of real content and you avoid the whole category of problems that come with changing it later.
At Settings > Permalinks you will see six built-in options plus a custom structure field. Each produces a different URL style.
yourdomain.co.uk/?p=123 — the default on a fresh install. A query parameter with a post ID. Works on every web server regardless of URL rewriting support. Useful as a fallback when debugging rewrite issues, useless for everything else. Do not ship a live site with Plain permalinks.
yourdomain.co.uk/2026/04/22/my-first-post/ — full date plus slug. Useful for news sites where the publication date is part of the content's relevance (breaking news, sports reports, stock market commentary). The BBC, The Guardian and most UK newspapers use variations of this structure. Not useful for a small business whose pages are evergreen.
yourdomain.co.uk/2026/04/my-first-post/ — slightly shorter version of Day and name. Same trade-off: good for time-stamped content, wasteful for evergreen content.
yourdomain.co.uk/archives/123 — an archive path plus post ID. Fractionally better than Plain because the structure is rewritten rather than a query string, but still meaningless to humans and search engines. No good reason to pick this.
yourdomain.co.uk/my-first-post/ — just the slug. Clean, readable, keyword-rich, timeless. The default choice for every brochure site, blog, portfolio, WooCommerce shop and most publisher sites.
Lets you build a URL pattern using structure tags: %year%, %monthnum%, %day%, %category%, %author%, %postname%, %post_id%. Useful for specific requirements — for example, /%category%/%postname%/ places each post inside its category in the URL (yourdomain.co.uk/news/budget-update/). Category-in-URL is mildly controversial because it couples URL structure to taxonomy, making recategorisation a breaking change. For most sites, plain Post name is simpler.
After selecting a structure, click Save Changes. WordPress writes the necessary rewrite rules to .htaccess (on Apache) or configures LiteSpeed's internal rewrites.
All permalink structures work out of the box on smartxhosting.uk's LiteSpeed web server. No manual .htaccess edits or server tweaks needed. LiteSpeed is fully Apache-compatible for rewrite rules, so .htaccess directives behave identically.
Picked once on a fresh site, Post name is a setting you should never need to revisit.
Below the main permalink options is an Optional section with two fields:
/category/. A category called "Tutorials" then has the URL yourdomain.co.uk/category/tutorials/./tag/.You can change these to anything that fits your site. Common changes:
recipes, producing /recipes/desserts/.work./tutorials/ directly but causes conflicts if a page or post also uses that slug.Left blank, WordPress uses the defaults. For most UK sites, /category/ and /tag/ are fine. Only change them if you have a clear reason and understand that changing them on a site with indexed content breaks every category and tag URL unless you set up redirects.
If your site is brand new and has not yet been indexed by Google, changing permalinks has no downside — no URLs exist to break. The following guidance applies only when you are changing a structure on a site that already has live content and incoming links.
Warning: changing the permalink structure on a live site breaks every existing URL. Visitors following bookmarks, other websites linking to yours, and Google's indexed pages will all receive 404 errors unless you set up 301 redirects first. Without redirects, you lose your entire SEO investment in one click.
On smartxhosting.uk, trigger an on-demand backup from the Plesk WordPress Toolkit before making any changes. The backup lets you roll back the change in under a minute if something goes wrong.
Plugins > Add New Plugin, search for Redirection (by John Godley), install and activate. This plugin monitors for URL changes and auto-creates 301 redirects.
Under Tools > Redirection > Options, tick Monitor permalink changes in WordPress posts and pages. This tells the plugin to watch for changes and set up redirects automatically as you change the structure or edit slugs.
Settings > Permalinks > Post name > Save Changes. The Redirection plugin picks up the change and creates 301 redirects from every old URL to its new Post name equivalent.
Open several old URLs in a private browser window. Confirm each one redirects to the new URL with a 301 status code. Check different page types: home, individual post, category archive, tag archive. Use a tool like httpstatus.io or redirectchecker.org to see the exact status codes.
After the change settles, resubmit your sitemap through Google Search Console so Google re-crawls the new URLs. Expect ranking positions to dip for 1–4 weeks while Google reprocesses, then recover as the 301s transfer authority.
If you want belt-and-braces safety, leave the Redirection plugin installed for at least six months after a permalink change. Old URLs occasionally surface from email archives, printed materials or deeply-buried forum posts years later; keeping redirects live means those rare visits still work.
The permalink structure defines the overall URL pattern. The slug is the specific piece of text unique to each page or post. If your structure is Post name and your page title is "Getting Started with WordPress", WordPress generates the slug getting-started-with-wordpress automatically, producing the URL yourdomain.co.uk/getting-started-with-wordpress/.
Edit the slug in the Block Editor by opening the Settings panel on the right-hand side, expanding the URL (or Permalink) section, and typing the slug you want. Click Update or Publish to save.
wordpress-permalinks is better than setting-up-permalinks-and-seo-friendly-urls-in-wordpress./About-Us/ and /about-us/ may be treated as different URLs — always lowercase.wordpress-permalinks is two words to Google; wordpress_permalinks is one.If you change the slug of an already-published post, the old URL becomes a 404. Add a redirect via the Redirection plugin, and update any internal links that still point to the old URL.
WordPress handles permalink structures natively, but SEO plugins extend control in useful ways.
/category/ from URLs for a cleaner structure.Specialised redirect management plugin. Free. Handles URL monitoring, 301/302 redirects, 404 logging, pass-through redirects. Essential if you are migrating a site, changing permalinks, or consolidating pages.
WooCommerce adds its own permalink settings at Settings > Permalinks > Optional. You can choose:
/product/product-name//shop/product-name//shop/category/product-name//books/%product_cat%/%postname%/Product category base and product tag base can also be customised. For most WooCommerce shops, the default /product/ and /product-category/ are fine; change only if you have a specific brand-related reason (e.g. yourdomain.co.uk/books/... for a bookshop).
Changing WooCommerce permalinks after launching the shop has the same consequences as changing the main permalink structure: every product URL breaks unless you set up redirects. The Redirection plugin monitors both standard posts and WooCommerce products, so it handles both in the same change.
Classic symptom after activating a new permalink structure — rewrite rules have not been flushed. Fix: go to Settings > Permalinks and click Save Changes (even without changing anything). This forces WordPress to regenerate the rewrite rules.
Usually means WordPress cannot write to .htaccess — file permissions or ownership issue. On smartxhosting.uk, the Plesk WordPress Toolkit handles permissions automatically; if this appears anyway, check the file manager for the correct owner (your domain's user) and 644 permissions on .htaccess.
Some URLs end with /, some do not — creates duplicate-content issues for Google. Fix: pick one (with trailing slash is more common in WordPress) and enforce with .htaccess rewrite rules or with Yoast/Rank Math canonical URLs.
If a page has the same slug as a post, one of them becomes inaccessible. WordPress usually disambiguates on save — you will see it append -2 to the second slug automatically. If not, rename one manually.
Is Post name genuinely the best choice for all sites?
For 95% of UK sites, yes. Exceptions: very date-driven news publications (where Day and name makes sense), or large publications where category-in-URL helps topic organisation. For every brochure site, blog, small business, portfolio, charity or WooCommerce shop, Post name is the default choice.
Will changing permalinks definitely hurt my SEO?
Temporarily yes, by 10–30% of organic traffic, for 2–6 weeks. With correctly configured 301 redirects the drop is modest and rankings recover. Without redirects, the drop is catastrophic and recovery takes months.
Do trailing slashes matter?
Technically yes — /about and /about/ are different URLs. WordPress defaults to trailing slashes with Post name structure. Google treats them as different but most servers redirect one to the other. Pick the WordPress default (trailing slash) and let Yoast or Rank Math enforce canonical URLs.
Can I have different permalink structures for posts and pages?
WordPress applies the structure to posts, not pages (pages always use /page-slug/). Custom post types follow their own slug rules registered by the plugin that creates them. WooCommerce products use the WooCommerce permalinks section.
What about internationalisation?
If you run a multilingual site with WPML or Polylang, each language can have its own slug. Welsh or Gaelic versions of a page can have translated slugs (/amdanon-ni/ for "about us" in Welsh), with the language code in the URL either as a subdirectory or subdomain.
Why does WordPress change my slug by adding "-2"?
Because another page, post, attachment or custom post type already uses that slug. Rename the slug manually to something unique.
Should I include stopwords in slugs?
No. Filler words ("the", "a", "and", "of", "in") add length without adding SEO value. Strip them from slugs even if they are present in the title.
How do I bulk-edit many slugs at once?
Plugins like Simple Slug Translate or Permalink Manager allow bulk editing. For huge changes, use WP-CLI from the Plesk WordPress Toolkit: wp post update $(wp post list --post_type=post --format=ids) --post_name=...
Do permalinks affect Google Analytics?
Analytics sees whatever URL the visitor hits. If you change permalinks, GA will show the new URLs going forward while historical data remains under the old URLs. This creates a visible break in the data but is easy to spot in reports.
What if my theme or plugin breaks after changing permalinks?
Some older themes hard-code URL assumptions. Clear all caches (LiteSpeed Cache, browser, CDN), re-save permalinks to flush rewrites, and check any theme options referring to URLs. If a specific plugin breaks, check its documentation for URL compatibility notes.
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