How to remove the category base from WordPress URLs
To remove /category/ from WordPress URLs, switch on Strip Category Base under Hydrogen SEO → General → Permalinks. Category links change from yoursite.com/category/news/ to yoursite.com/news/ everywhere WordPress prints them, and the old addresses 301-redirect to the new ones, so existing links keep working.
WordPress itself cannot do this. The Category base field under Settings → Permalinks only changes the word, for example to /topics/. Leave it empty and WordPress falls back to category.
Step by step
1. Decide whether it is worth changing
Shorter category URLs are tidier, and they read better in breadcrumbs and search results. The ranking effect of removing one word is small. On a new site, turn it on now while nothing links to the old addresses. On an established site it is still safe because of the redirects, but treat it as a URL change and check Search Console afterwards.
2. Check for slug clashes
Without the base, a category and a page can compete for the same address. Compare your category slugs under Posts → Categories with your page slugs. If a published page already uses /news/, Hydrogen SEO keeps the News category at /category/news/ so the page still loads. With the /%postname%/ structure, the same applies to posts. Rename one of the two slugs if you want the short address for the category.
3. Turn on Strip Category Base
- Open Hydrogen SEO → General.
- In Permalinks, switch on Strip Category Base.
- The change saves automatically after a couple of seconds, or click Save in the top bar.
If you imported settings from Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress or Slim SEO, their equivalent setting was carried into this switch, so it may already be on.
4. Check the new URLs
Open a category from your menu and confirm the address. Child categories keep their hierarchy, as /news/local/. Feeds and pagination work on the new addresses, such as /news/feed/ and /news/page/2/. Menus, the XML sitemap, canonical URLs and breadcrumbs all switch to the new form, because they use WordPress's own category links.
5. Test the old address
Request an old category URL and look at the headers:
curl -sI https://example.com/category/news/
You should get a 301 with location: https://example.com/news/. Query strings are kept on the redirect.
6. Fix hard-coded links
Links typed into post content or added as custom menu links still say /category/. They work through the redirect, but updating them saves a hop. Search your content for /category/ and edit the important ones, starting with menus and high-traffic posts.
7. Watch Search Console for a few weeks
Old category URLs will move to Page with redirect in the Pages report as Google recrawls. That is expected. Watch the category URLs in the Performance report, filtered by page, to confirm the new addresses pick up the impressions.
When not to do this
Skip it if many of your page slugs match category slugs and you are not willing to rename them, because you will end up with a mix of short and /category/ URLs. Also hold off if you are in the middle of another URL change, such as a new permalink structure or a domain move. One change at a time makes problems easy to trace; see change permalinks without losing SEO.
Common mistakes
- Setting the Category base to a dot or another placeholder. It is an old workaround that produces odd URLs and does not redirect the old ones.
- Running two tools that both strip the base. Use one, or you get conflicting rewrite rules. Deactivate any single-purpose plugin that did this before.
- Forgetting to purge the CDN. Cached pages keep showing old links until the cache clears.
Common questions
Will removing the category base break existing links?
No. Old /category/ addresses 301-redirect to the new ones with the query string kept, and every link WordPress prints switches to the new address.
Why does one category still have /category/ in its URL?
A published page, or with the /%postname%/ structure a post, already uses that address. Rename one of the two slugs to free it.
Does this change tag URLs too?
No. Strip Category Base only affects categories. Tag URLs keep their /tag/ base.
Does it work with plain permalinks?
No. Plain permalinks use ?cat=123 style addresses, so there is no category base to remove.