[memeLab]

my understanding is that you can just edit the permalink as you have done, with a few caveats:

beware duplicate slugs
beware changing links which have already accrued link juice

A quick intro to permalinks: all requests to WordPress are actually funnelled through http://www.your-site.com/your-wp-directory/index.php, which then implements the redirects using php. (It can otherwise be done earlier in htaccess). WordPress stores all the permalinks that it creates in the database table wp_posts in the column 'post_name'.

WP won't create a duplicate name, so if you put  /home in the trash (not emptied), then try to recreate it, you'll get /home-2.

Changing the slugs can be bad for your ranking, because you may have accumulated link juice at /my-popular-post and if you change that to /my -really-popular-post then when you get reindexed, Google will receive a 404 not found at your valuable address, and you lose the juice.  This is why the Redirection plugin is useful - when Google visits, it will be informed that your valuable page is still viable, but has moved permanently to the new URL by a 301 response.

To address your original issue:

install redirection,
Tools>Redirection>Redirects, add new redirection:

Source = /my-old-slug
Target = /my-new-slug

Going forward:

ensure that under tools>redirection>options: URL Monitoring is set to 'Modified Posts' and 'monitor new posts'
edit your post permalink (if a number is appended to you chosen permalink, there is a duplicate)
Redirection will automatically add a redirect (see it under Redirection>Groups>modified posts)

Best wishes, Tim

[memeLab]

Yoast's SEO plugin has a redirect built in, but I'd recommend using Urban Giraffe's Redirection plugin.  once activated, it will monitor changes to the post permalink and automatically create a redirect for you.  You can manually add simple redirects, or use regex if you're game 🙂

It does everything but make toast!

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