What is a Permalink: How to Change Permalink in WordPress or Blogger

Recently I have been asked by multiple people on what is a Permalink in WordPress and is it possible to change the permalink in WordPress?

Then I certainly thought to create a detailed guide on the permalink and its importance in a WordPress website.

But if you are using Blogger not WordPress then not to worry as I have shared the ways to change the permalink in blogger as well.

In summary, a permalink is the URL of the webpage, the URL which will be browsed in the Google for specific page search or the one which search engine index your post.

The idea behind having this guide is to explain what is permalink and how it is important and how you could change this.

The reason behind learning about permalink before everything is to understand how Google ranking, SEO and future of website traffic depends on permalink.

Let me explain to you first what is permalink.

Table of Contents

• What is a Permalink and why this is important?
• How Permalink should look like?
• How to change the permalink in WordPress Website
  • Change permalink from the Slug Word
  • Change the permalink from the Setting
  • Change the format of the permalink for individual post
• How to change a permalink in Blogger site
• How to redirect old permalink to New Permalink
• A final thought on what is a permalink
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What is a Permalink and why this is important?

In lemon terms, permalink referred as a permanent static hyperlink to a particle web page or any blog post through which any user can browse your post and pages.

While searching in Google for any specific query or post you have two ways to do so.

1. Searching by keyword for random websites list.
2. Searching by providing the specific blog post URL.

In the second case, the specific URL which you searched is known as a permalink which we also called a blog URL.

In the above screenshot, you can see I have searched for a specific blog post of mine by providing its complete URL, which suggested me the exact post for which that URL mapped.

We all know that every data on the online world is exist somewhere on public or private WordPress website and its existence to all over the internet possible through the domain name.

But if we talk specific to any post or pages or category of website that always has its own .html page and if you want to redirect to that specific page you need permalink or custom link of post or pages URL.

Every Permalink is made of four things as listed below.

• HTTP/HTTPS – One of the security Hypertext transfer protocols
• Domain Name e.g www.example.com
• Custom text for a post-specific keywords
• ended with .html

By combining all of them you will get custom permalink and the best part with permalink is you can change the custom text for a specific post.

You can add or update the permalink after the domain name as every website permalink has defined fixed structure till domain name which can not be changed, the only part which can be edited is after that only which we call slug word.

So this guide is all about how to change permalink or customize permalink, without permalink no website can exist on the internet as it is kind of address of your home where no letter receives if it is not properly typed.

Well, I imagine you got an idea of what is permalink and what is the importance of it, now let me highlight the few things about permalink should look like.

How Permalink should look like?

Permalink could be of different types either it can have a 50 character long or in some time more than 100 characters, so what should exactly it looks like.

Make sure to aware of below points while creating your own permalinks.

• Your permalink should not be longer than 53-55 character.
• Avoid month date and time in the permalink
• Avoid symbols in the permalink.
• Make sure permalink should match with the title you have created.

Above 5 points are crucial while setting up permalink, the reason is once you set permalink it won’t change for the post, it will remain associated with that post only.

In case if you change the Permalink in future all SEO credit or backlinks you earned from the old link will be lost so people use to do redirection of the link.

Redirection means linking old permalink with the new one so if the user clicks to old link then instead of “404 not found page” it will be redirected to the new permalink URL.

But an expert says it will lose 20% of link juice which you gained from the old permalink. So make sure you aware of the above points while choosing the right permalinks.

If you are new to WordPress then to check the format of permalink you should follow below navigations, open the WordPress Admin >> Navigate to Setting >> click to Permalinks.

From the above screenshot, you can see it has different types of permalink such as

• Permalink included a number at the end which calls plain text
• Permalink include date and time in the URL
• Permalink include month and name in the URL
• Numeric permalink
• Permalink include post name in URL
• Custom permalink which is editable by the user.

Out of the above permalink type, the only very best option is to choose custom permalink where you can include your targeted keywords and shorten the permalink for the character you want.

Let me get you on ways how to change a custom permalink in the WordPress website.

How to change the permalink in WordPress Website

Change in the permalink for a WordPress website can be done in different ways, we will go through each one of them and will explain what and how and when you should do changes with the permalink.

Change permalink from the Slug Word

Generally, slug in WordPress is known as the user-friendly name of post or pages, every post by default takes title name as slug word unless you set custom permalink.

Default every WordPress editor will display the permalink for that specific post below the title of the editor.

Here you can see the hyperlink is the permalink for the same post where the slug word generally referred here as “how-to-change-WordPress-password” is added with the domain name.

If you want to change this slug word then click to edit and you will be allowed to change it with new.

In such a way you can change the permalink of any post on the WordPress website, once you update make sure to click Ok button.

The new link with the updated slug words will be updated and will be effective immediately so let me go through another process on changing the permalink.

Change the permalink from the Setting

As we discussed earlier, we have different formats of permalink which can be changed through the setting of permalink.

But this change in setting will apply for all the posts as it is going to be the default setting changes with all the posts permalink.

Few people refer to have permalink format including date and time which explains how older their post is and other love to include their categories in every post they publish however both cases are not recommended.

If you want to change with anything then go to the Setting>> Permalinks>>Check for Common setting and chose the format you want.

Let’s imagine, you have published a post with title name as  “Top 5 ways to rank in Google” then in result.

Day and Name Permalink

https://www.example.com/2019/08/20/top-5-ways-to-rank-in-Google.html

Month and Name Permalink

https://www.example.com/2019/08/top-5-ways-to-rank-in-Google.html

Post Name Permalink

https://www.example.com/top-5-ways-to-rank-in-Google.html

In such a way based on the option, you have chosen default permalink will be displayed where only change you can do is with the slug word, you can not change the date, time or another format on the editor window.

Custom Permalink

Hence the last best option is a custom structure where you can decide the format of the permalink.

As I prefer to exclude date, time, category and just willing to have post name as slug word which even I can change on the edit screen.

There are drawbacks in the earlier explained static method, if in case you want to change with the category, the date, etc you won’t be able to change as those will be uneditable but now in the custom structure, you can change.

Just pick and drop the below available option and can create your own format of permalink make sure to separate out each entry by a forward slash (/).

Let say you can have https://example.com/%category%/%postname%.html

Which in result your URL will look like by considering the category of SEO.

https://www.example.com/seo/top-5-ways-to-rank-in-Google.html

In such a way you have to do changes with the permalink of the post where you can also exclude the category.

Change the permalink of Categories

Change in the permalink for category pages can be done by doing changes with the category pages within the Post.

To change the same, navigate to Posts >> Categories >> Click to edit option available for the category you want to change.

It will navigate to specific category edit window where you can do changes with the slug word and simply hit the update button.

Make sure every entry to slug edit box should be either letter, number or hyphens only, if have two words then make sure both are added in middle with a hyphen (-).

If you will do changes with the slug of blogging by master-blogging then it will have URL like

https://www.example.com/master-blogging

If you need changes with other categories then need to follow the same changes with each category.

Change the format of the permalink for individual post

While doing changes with the structure of permalink, which in result your complete website post, pages or categories permalink will get change.

This means your older post URL or page URL is now been replaced with the new one however you want to change with the only one.

This could be possible using a plugin called Custom permalink, which will help to update the post, pages, tags or categories. Install this plugin to WordPress and activate that plugin.

After adding the plugins you can change the permalink of each individual post and in the same way you can change the permalink of the categories using the same plugin.

In category, new fields will be added at the bottom of the page where you can give the style of the category.

In such a way, we can have a way to individual change in the post and categories permalink.

How to change a permalink in Blogger site

Blogger has no support for the external plugins, it has only a single way to change the permalink is from the post editor right-hand side Post setting option only.

Every post will take the title name as their default permalink but this is subject to change if the user wants before publishing the posts.

Here default, every post has been assigned with an automatic permalink which has the date, time but you can select to the custom permalink option and can change the slug words for the permalink.

Which means you can not customize more with plugins as it will always have year and month in the permalink.

How to redirect old permalink to New Permalink

If you change the structure of the permalink or changing the already existing published post or pages permalink then if the user clicks to older link will get “404 not found page”.

Why because the old website post or content has been moved to the new permalink which means you lose your overall traffic.

So make sure to redirect the old post permalink to the new one which assures to navigate old permalink clicks to the new one.

In such a way, if the user clicks or searches to old permalink he will be routed automatically to the new one but not 404 not found page.For the same reason, you can download a plugin called Redirect

Using this plugin you can provide the source URL and Target URL where the source will be the original permalink and Target will be the new permalink.

After providing both clicks to Add redirect will set all your old URL navigation to the new one.

I hope you got an idea about how to change permalink and the plugin to redirect one to second.

A final thought on what is a permalink

Avoid any structural change in permalink after publishing multiple posts, as with that new change will require redirection of already published posts.

I prefer to have post-slug just after the domain so do not include the date, time or any category in the post as these things highlight or hide the actual keywords of the post.

Permalink should be matched with the post title or the content of the posts. Avoid the use of numbers or any special symbols except hyphens in it.

If you are changing permalink for specific posts, where planning to replace category, date or time then make sure to do this using the custom permalink plugins.

Which avoid changes in the other posts, but the change in slug word can be done without plugin as it is not going to change with other posts.

I hope you got an overview or ways on what is permalink and how to change the permalink of a WordPress or blogger website let us know if you have any query.