When you’re new to blogging, a natural question to ask is: what is a permalink?
Short answer: it’s the permanent URL of a specific blog post or page on your site. Long answer: it’s one of the single most important SEO decisions you’ll make, because permalinks are designed to never change. Fixing a bad one after it’s ranking is a real pain.
Let me show you exactly what I mean.
My blog homepage is located at: https://www.ryrob.com/
A permalink example from my blog would be: https://www.ryrob.com/what-is-permalink/
In this guide, I’ll walk you through what a permalink actually is, the difference between permalinks, URLs, and slugs (yes, there is one), how to set SEO-friendly permalinks in WordPress, and the mistakes I’d warn any new blogger about before they hit publish.
What is a Permalink? (Definition)
A permalink (short for “permanent link”) is the full URL of a specific blog post or page that should remain unchanged once the content is published. Permalinks are designed to be SEO-friendly, human-readable, and reliable, both for people who want to share your content and for search engines that need to index it.
Here’s what a permalink looks like in the address bar of your browser when you’re reading a post:
In that example, “ryrob.com” is the domain name and “what-is-permalink” is the permalink. Combined, they make the full URL for the page.
Permalink vs URL vs Slug: A Quick Clarifier
People use these three terms interchangeably, but they mean slightly different things. Let me settle it.
- URL — the full web address, including the protocol, domain, and path. Example:
https://www.ryrob.com/what-is-permalink/. More on this in my complete guide on URLs. - Permalink — the specific URL of an individual post or page, designed to stay permanent. Every permalink is a URL; not every URL is a permalink (your homepage URL isn’t a “permalink” in the strict sense).
- Slug — just the last chunk of the permalink, the part after your domain. In
ryrob.com/what-is-permalink/, the slug iswhat-is-permalink. When you edit a permalink in WordPress, you’re really just editing the slug.
For day-to-day blogging work, the three are basically the same thing. But when you see developers or SEO tools use “slug,” they specifically mean that last editable chunk.
Why Permalinks Should (Almost) Never Change
Once a post or page is published, its permalink shouldn’t change except in rare cases. That’s because any incoming link from another website will suddenly be pointing to a missing URL, which hurts your SEO and reader experience.
Changing a permalink without a 301 redirect creates what’s called a broken link. When someone clicks through from Google or another site, they hit a 404 error page instead of your content. That’s a bad experience for readers, and Google picks up on it quickly:
- Backlinks lose their authority. Every external link pointing to the old permalink now points to a broken page. All that SEO value you earned evaporates.
- Bounce rate spikes. Visitors hit a 404 and leave immediately.
- Rankings drop. Google stops sending traffic to pages that 404, and too many broken URLs can devalue your whole site.
If you do need to change a permalink (you made a typo, the original slug wasn’t keyword-optimized, or you’re consolidating two posts), it’s absolutely critical to set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. That tells search engines the page has permanently moved, preserving 90–99% of the SEO authority. My complete guide to 301 redirects walks through exactly how to set one up in 2 minutes, using the free Redirection plugin by John Godley. That’s what I recommend in 2026; the older “Quick Page/Post Redirect” plugin I used to recommend has been abandoned.
WordPress Permalink Structure Options
If you’re running WordPress (which I recommend to pretty much every blogger), you have full control over the default permalink structure for every post on your site.
Go to Settings → Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard:
You’ll see a clear warning at the top: “WARNING: Changing your permalinks settings can seriously impact your search engine visibility. It should almost never be done on a live website.” That’s there for a reason. See the previous section.
Here are the six options WordPress offers, and what I recommend for each:
- Plain —
?p=123. The default on fresh WordPress installs. Zero SEO value. Never use this. - Day and name —
/2026/04/23/sample-post/. Includes the full publish date. Fine for news sites, terrible for blogs with evergreen content; every post looks stale the year after publishing. - Month and name —
/2026/04/sample-post/. Same problem as “Day and name,” slightly shorter. - Numeric —
/archives/123. No keyword, no readability. Skip. - Post name —
/sample-post/. The winner for 95% of blogs. Short, keyword-forward, evergreen. This is what I use on ryrob.com and what I recommend to every new blogger. - Custom Structure — lets you mix and match. Advanced users only. If you’re not sure, go Post name.
My recommendation: choose “Post name” and don’t look back. It’s the cleanest, most SEO-friendly option, and it’s what the vast majority of high-ranking blogs use.
How to Write SEO-Friendly Permalinks
Picking “Post name” is step one. Step two is actually writing good permalinks for every post you publish. Here’s my five-rule checklist.
1. Include Your Target Keyword
Before you even write a permalink, do proper keyword research and decide what you want the post to rank for. That keyword goes in the permalink.
Here are real examples from my own blog showing how SEO-friendly titles translate into SEO-friendly permalinks:
- How to Start a Blog → ryrob.com/how-start-blog/
- How to Make Money Blogging → ryrob.com/make-money-blogging/
- 101 Best Blog Post Ideas → ryrob.com/blog-post-ideas/
- How to Pick a Blog Niche → ryrob.com/blog-niche/
2. Keep It Short and Punchy
Aim for 3–5 meaningful words in the slug. WordPress will auto-generate a permalink from your full post title, but that’s almost never the right answer. If your title is “15 Ways to Start a Blog in 2026 (for Beginners),” WordPress will propose /15-ways-to-start-a-blog-in-2026-for-beginners/. Way too long. Trim it down to /start-a-blog/ or /how-start-blog/.
3. Drop the Stop Words
Most permalinks don’t need the, a, of, and, for, to, with, or similar stop words. Dropping them tightens the permalink and sharpens the keyword signal.
That’s why my permalink for “How to Start a Blog” is /how-start-blog/, not /how-to-start-a-blog/. Both rank for the same search term, and the shorter one reads cleaner and saves characters.
Don’t chop so aggressively that the permalink stops making sense, though. /start-blog/ is fine. /blog/ is too thin.
4. Use Hyphens, Not Underscores
Google treats hyphens (-) as word separators and underscores (_) as connectors. So /how-start-blog/ reads as three words to Google, while /how_start_blog/ reads as one unrecognizable word. WordPress defaults to hyphens (good), but if you’re migrating from another platform, double-check.
5. Always Lowercase
Permalinks should be entirely lowercase. Some servers treat /How-Start-Blog/ and /how-start-blog/ as two different pages, which creates duplicate-content issues in Google. Keep it lowercase, always.
Use My Free Keyword Research Tool
Try my free AI-Powered Keyword Tool to get dozens of research-backed ideas for keywords & topics to write about on your blog today.
And if you want a head start on writing a clean slug, I built a free permalink generator tool inside RightBlogger that spits out SEO-friendly permalink suggestions based on your post title or target keyword. It’s one of the 80+ AI tools I’ve built for bloggers who want to move faster.
How to Change a Permalink (Without Breaking SEO)
The cleanest way to change a permalink is before you hit publish. Once the post is live and Google starts sending traffic, changing the slug gets much more complicated.
Changing a Permalink on a Draft (The Easy Way)
In the Gutenberg editor, open the post sidebar and click on the “Permalink” section. You’ll see an editable URL slug field:
Edit the slug to whatever clean, keyword-rich version you want. Save the draft. Done.
If you’re still using the Classic editor, the permalink field sits right below the post title:
Changing a Permalink on a Published Post (The Careful Way)
Here’s where you need to be careful. Changing the permalink on a live, indexed post will 404 every external backlink pointing to the old URL, unless you set up a 301 redirect at the same time.
The three-step process:
- Install a redirect plugin. I use the free Redirection plugin by John Godley (2M+ installs, the 2026 standard). If you’re on Rank Math, Yoast Premium, or AIOSEO Pro, they all have a built-in redirect manager — no extra plugin needed.
- Change the permalink. Edit the post, update the slug, save.
- Set up the 301 redirect. Source URL = the old permalink, Target URL = the new permalink, Status code = 301. My complete guide to 301 redirects walks through each step.
The Redirection plugin actually automates step 3 for you — it watches for permalink changes on your site and offers to create the 301 redirect automatically. That’s worth its weight in gold for any blogger who tweaks slugs after publishing.
7 Common Permalink Mistakes to Avoid
- Leaving WordPress on the default “Plain” permalink structure.
?p=123is zero-SEO. Switch to Post name before you publish a single post. - Including the year or date in the permalink.
/2024/my-post/looks stale the moment 2025 hits. Keep dates out of slugs and put any year modifiers in the post title instead. - Accepting the auto-generated slug without editing it. WordPress will pull every word from your post title into the slug. 90% of the time you need to trim it down.
- Changing a live permalink without a 301 redirect. Instantly breaks every backlink pointing to the old URL. Always pair the change with a redirect.
- Stuffing the permalink with keywords.
/blog-best-blog-tips-for-blogging/reads as spam to both humans and Google. - Using special characters. Apostrophes, ampersands, and other special characters get URL-encoded into ugly
%27and%26strings. Stick to letters, numbers, and hyphens. - Inconsistent category / tag permalinks. If you switch from including
/category/in your URL path to not including it (or vice versa), every category URL breaks. Pick a structure and commit.
Permalink Frequently Asked Questions
Common permalink questions I get from readers. If yours isn’t here, ask in the comments below.
What is a permalink example?
A permalink is simply a permanent URL. A permalink example would be: https://www.website.com/this-is-a-permalink-example/
Notice how the URL slug uses all lowercase letters with hyphens instead of spaces. That’s the standard format for an SEO-friendly permalink.
How do I create a permalink?
How you create a permalink depends on your content management system. If you’re on WordPress (which I recommend, and which powers 43%+ of websites in 2026), permalinks are enabled by default. Here’s how to set yours up on the most common platforms:
- WordPress: Navigate to Settings → Permalinks and pick “Post name” as your default structure. Each post’s slug is then editable per-post in the sidebar when editing.
- Wix: Permalink options live under the SEO basics menu when editing a page.
- Squarespace: Permalinks are called slugs and are editable in the page settings.
- Ghost: Every post has a URL slug field in the publish sidebar — edit before publishing.
- Webflow: Slugs live under each page’s Settings → Slug field.
Why is a permalink important?
Permalinks matter for three reasons:
- SEO: your permalink is one of Google’s strongest signals about what the page is about. A keyword in the permalink helps you rank for that keyword.
- Shareability: a clean, readable permalink is easier to remember, type, and share than
?p=341. - Trust: users who see
/about-me/in a URL know what to expect before they click. That’s a small trust signal that adds up across a site.
Can I change a permalink after I publish?
Yes, but carefully. Changing a live permalink without a 301 redirect will break every backlink pointing to the old URL and kill its rankings. If you must change a published permalink, set up a 301 from the old URL to the new one as part of the change — you’ll keep 90–99% of the SEO value.
What’s the difference between a permalink and a URL?
A URL is any web address; a permalink is specifically the permanent URL of an individual post or page. Every permalink is a URL, but not every URL is a permalink (your homepage URL, for example, isn’t typically called a permalink). For the full breakdown, see my complete guide to URLs.
Should I include dates in my permalinks?
No. Year-dated permalinks (/2024/my-post/) look stale the moment the year changes, and they make refreshes harder. Use “Post name” as your structure and put year modifiers in the post title or SEO title instead, where they’re trivially easy to update.
Final Thoughts on Permalinks
Permalinks are one of those foundational SEO decisions that look boring on the surface and compound enormously over the life of a blog. Get them right from day one and every post you ever publish inherits a clean, SEO-friendly URL structure. Get them wrong and you’ll be cleaning up bad slugs and broken redirects for years.
The five-minute checklist: switch WordPress to “Post name,” always edit the auto-generated slug before publishing, keep it short and keyword-forward, lowercase with hyphens, no dates. That’s it. Do those five things and your permalinks will never hold your rankings back.
If you’re still setting up your blog and haven’t configured permalinks yet, check out my complete guide on how to start a blog — I walk through the full WordPress setup including the permalink settings. And if you ever need to move a post to a new URL, my guide to 301 redirects will show you how to do it without losing your SEO.
Wow, I never thought of the importance of permalink structure before now. You’ve taken time to explain the concept to my understanding. I’ll have to set my permalinks better now. Hope it will not have any effects on my Google rankings. Thanks for this information.
Boom! Glad to have helped, Vivian 🙂
Thanks for the info. It has really helped. Now can you explain the SEO?
Thanks, Lisa! Glad you found my permalinks tutorial helpful 🙂
Sure, check out my guide to blog SEO right here: https://www.ryrob.com/blog-seo/
I appreciate your content! Though I have a question to clarify… you gave 3 examples of permalinks and 1 was about “How to make money blogging”
You then suggested…
“It’s important to include your target keyword phrase in the permalink for your post or page, and any other crucial operative words like “how” or “why” that clearly indicate the nature of what your content is talking about.”
In this case why wouldn’t you have added into your permalink the “how to make money blogging.”
What is a key indicator that tells us when to and when not to include the “How”?
This is a very useful article. Keep doing good work. Thanks.
You’re welcome, Natalie.
Hello Ryan,
I was interested in learning how a permalink connects and how it gives search engines easy work.
Outline why i should not use such phrases.
– who
– how-to
– from
– with
Hey there! A word like “how” is actually a great word to include in your permalinks (if your page is explaining how to do something), because it gives a clear meaning signal to search engines like Google to help them determine what your article is about. The same goes for “who” as it indicated the nature of your content on the page.
For less value-driven words like “from” and “with” that don’t add much meaning to your permalinks, I’ve found it’s often best to leave them out and stick with a simple permalink.
How do I set my permalink in the right way
If you follow the instructions here above, then you’ll get your permalink settings squared away just right 🙂
Great article. I have a product that is the same as a product on another site. When searching for the name, the other site comes up first. I want to change my permalink structure to have the product as the permalink as well as the title. Should I make a new product and new permalink or change the current structure?
Hey Nicole! I’d recommend changing your existing permalink (to be the better, more keyword rich URL), but make sure you also set up a 301 redirect so that any links your page has, get passed on to the new permalink destination of your page… this’ll also make it much easier for search engines to follow your content to its new destination. More on setting up 301 redirects here: https://www.ryrob.com/what-is-301-redirect/
I’m so glad i read this article right AFTER changing some permalinks on my already published posts. Needless to say, I immediately changed them back to their original form. Hopefully it won’t negatively affect my website. Thanks for the info!
Haha well I’m glad you found it regardless! You should be fine, if you corrected it within 24hrs or so, then it’s highly doubtful there’d be any lasting negative impact.
More wisdom sir!❤️
Consider it done!
please, after “Post Name” automatically select blog post title, can l edit the permalink before l publish the blog post?
Yes, absolutely! You can always edit a permalink… and it’s certainly best to do that before you publish the article.
I actually just updated this post with clear instructions on how to change your permalink before you publish an article (or edit it), so check that out 🙂
Good content on your permalink advice. I also changed my permalink in WordPress that helped me in rankings.
Nice! Glad to hear that, Ahsan 🙏
Up to date information as per 2021 standards and google updates, RYAN!
There is a tons of misunderstanding in between people who just start blogging or doing it for clinets as a freelancer, they stuck at Permalink a lot of times. No i have your blog so definitely shared with them first so they too get all the benefits.
Stay safe!
Thanks for sharing
You’re welcome! Thanks for the kind words 🙂
Do you advocate creating a “parent-child” permalink in order to support a silo arrangement on your blog?
I’ve seen the parent-child permalink structure work very well for certain use cases, but for my blog I haven’t yet had the *need* to implement it… now, if I were to do a series of posts that are all related to an overarching theme / topic… like let’s say a dozen or two comparison articles between service providers in an industry, then it could make a lot of sense to have a structure like… “mysite(.)com/comparison/tool-abc-tool-xyz” or something along those lines.
Is permalink the same with URL
Yep! Your permalink is the same thing as a URL 🙂
Hey Ryan,
As always, an enjoyable read.
Firstly, sorry for the being a bit late to the party, but this is a subject that I wished to learn more today.
I have a niche website that was doing really well until I got hit by a couple of the Google Updates of 2022 (HCU & Spam).
It occurred to me that much of content was far too keyword focused, hence the potential spam penalties.
One of things that I had done with this site was to have the permalink as the exact keyword, including any stop words.
This also happened to be exact title, as well as my first H2 tag after my introduction (it’s probably easy to see why I received a Google “slap” now, LOL).
I’m in the process of rewriting most articles on the site (all 571 one of them, phew!), but wanted to know what you thought about potentially changing ALL the permalinks to be a little “less spammy”?
I’m aware of 301 redirects, etc. but just wanted your opinion.
Is changing my content to be more “helpful” and less “spammy” enough, or should I also alter my permalinks too?
Thanks very much Ryan, I’ve learned a lot from you over the years.
Look forward to your response.
Partha
Hey Partha! GREAT questions. The short answer I’d give you is… don’t overcorrect! I think it’s quite possible to read into short-term Google algorithm fluctuations a bit too much, when your rankings/traffic might actually settle out over the longer-term.
If you take a look at how my permalinks are structured here on my blog, you’ll see I go pretty directly at the main target keyword phrase for a particular article. That’s intentional, because it sends a clear signal to search engines as to the topic of my content here—and I strongly believe that’s a good best practice to follow. So I wouldn’t recommend changing all of your permalinks on your blog (and thus create a bunch of redirects). That being said, while I do recommend a permalink (and H1) to include your target keyword phrase, it’s very smart to make sure your article/page as a whole does a more comprehensive job of naturally talking about the subject at-hand, rather than keyword stuffing into every header along through your blog post. That’s the place to make sure you’re being much more natural in language/structure.
Hey Ryan,
Thanks very much for the reply.
This all makes perfect sense, and is exactly how was I looking to move forward.
Appreciate the confirmation.
Partha
You’re welcome, Partha! Really glad my pointers were helpful—I hope you see a traffic rebound soon (focus on the on-page stuff & make sure your content reads like it’s by and for real humans) 🙂
Your content is rich. It answers my question: How do I make my blog rank high on major search engines?
Nice! Thanks for sharing 🙂
I cannot understand which problems could have.
Can you open it and give me a hand to understand my mistakes, please?
Also Adsense doesn’t accept my site.
Many thanks