How to Quickly Change Your WordPress URL – 2025 Guide

In WordPress, permanent URLs, or “permalinks,” are the building blocks of site layout and content navigation. A permalink is something you’ve used every time you clicked on a blog post or went to a “About Us” page. Search engines use these URLs to find your site and tell people how to get to your content.

This blog post goes into great detail about how to change the Permalink settings in WordPress. This will help you make URLs more visible, improve the user experience, and get more visitors.

1. What Are Permalinks?

When someone clicks on a permalink, it takes them straight to a certain page or blog post on your website. They’re called “permanent” because they’re meant to stay the same over time.

Breakdown of the Structure:

• Protocol: https://
• Domain Name: example.com
• Slug (or URI): how-to-change-permalinks

They make up this link: https://example.com/how-to-change-permalinks

These URLs are made by WordPress automatically, but you can change how they look at any time.

2.Why the structure of your URLs is important

A URL is often the first thing a person does when they visit your site. These are the main reasons you should make them better:

1. Benefits of SEO

Search engines look at buzzwords in URLs to figure out how relevant a page is.

Clean URLs with lots of information lead to better rankings.

2. User Experience

Readable URLs make people more likely to believe you and click on your links.

It’s easier to share and remember URLs that are short and make sense.

3. Content Hierarchy

A well-organized site design is strengthened by URL structures that make sense.

4. Ability to grow

If you use strong permalinks, your website will stay easy to navigate and keep up to date even as it grows.

3. Looking at the default WordPress permalink settings

In your WordPress homepage, go to Settings > Permalinks. There you’ll see a list of options:

4. Setting up WordPress’s permalinks: a step-by-step guide

Step 1: Go to your admin dashboard and log in.

Visit: https://yourdomain.com/wp-admin

Step 2: Go to Settings > Permalinks

You’ll see a list of structures that can be used and a place where you can enter your own.

Step 3: Choose or make the structure you want.

Pick “Post Name” or set up your own structure:

/custom/%category%/%postname%/

Step 4: Save the changes

Press the blue “Save Changes” button. WordPress will keep your.htaccess file up to date.

5. Changing the URLs of each page and post

You can change the slug (the last part of the URL) for any page or post, even after setting a global permalink structure.

Steps:

1. Open the post/page.
2. Click on the URL beneath the title.
3. Edit the slug to something keyword-rich.
4. Click “Update.”

Example:

• Old URL: /services/page-id-45
• New URL: /services/web-design-packages

6. The SEO science behind how permalinks are set up

Best Practices:

• Use terms that are related to your subject.
• Use hyphens, not underscores.
• Stay away from words that stop the flow of speech, like “and,” “or,” and “the.”
• It should be short and easy, with no more than 60 characters.
• At least try to match the slugs to the page names.

Not to do:

• Dates (unless the content you post is time-sensitive)
• Numeric IDs
• Random strings or autogenerated text

7. Making use of 301 redirects to keep links from breaking

It’s important to keep users and search engines from getting 404 problems when you change URLs.

Tools:

• With Yoast SEO Premium, redirects are set immediately.
• Redirection Plugin (takes care of 301s manually)

Manual .htaccess Redirect:

Redirect 301 /old-page-url/ https://yourdomain.com/new-page-url/

8. How to Fix Permalink Errors

Problems that most people have:

• 404 problems after setting up a new site
• Media or private links that don’t work
• URLs for custom post types won’t load

What to do:

• Go to Settings > Permalinks and click Save Changes to flush rewrite rules.
• Check .htaccess permissions (should be writable).
• Remove apps that are causing problems.

9. Using plugins to clean up and handle URL redirects

Plugins that we recommend:

• Redirection: It’s simple to use and works with logs and 404 tracking.
• Yoast SEO: The premium version lets you set up automatic links.
• With Permalink Manager Pro, you have full control over your own slugs and category URLs.

These tools will make it easier to switch between permalinks and handle old URLs.

10. Real-World Use Cases: Before and After URL Optimization

E-commerce Store:

• Before: site.com/?product=1234
• After: site.com/products/leather-jacket
• Result: +67% click-through rate in Google search results.

Blog about travel:

• Before: site.com/blog/?p=99
• After: site.com/blog/top-5-destinations-2025
• Result: 38% increase in page visits.

Changing and optimizing your WordPress page URLs through the Permalinks Settings is a big step that makes your website much easier to use and more visible in search engines.

If you do this small change right, it can bring in a lot more visitors and keep them there longer.

🎥 Watch the Video Tutorial Here:

Need expert assistance? Reach out to Preet Web Vision today and let us optimize your digital presence.

📧 Email: hello@preetwebvision.com
📞 Phone: +63-9633112000
🌐 Visit: https://preetwebvision.com