Transitioning Blog Permalinks and Slugs to Alphanumeric ASCII Characters

📅 Created: 2023/11/23, Updated: 2023/11/23 ⏱️ Estimated reading time ~1 min (209 words)

Why we migrated all blog post permalink URLs from multibyte localized characters to clean alphanumeric slugs, addressing SEO indexing and URL copying issues.

Table of Contents

What is a Permalink?
Setting the Optimal Permalink Structure
Summary

What is a Permalink?

A permalink (permanent link) is the permanent, specific URL assigned to a blog post or page.
For example, in this blog’s URL https://moderniser.repo.cont-aid.com/Changed-the-permalink-of-the-blog-URL-to-alphabetical-characters , the trailing segment Changed-the-permalink-of-the-blog-URL-to-alphabetical-characters constitutes the permalink.

Setting the Optimal Permalink Structure

In general blog design, permalinks often adopt the article title directly.
However, when titles are written in non-Latin characters (such as Japanese or other multibyte scripts), containing localized characters directly in URLs can prevent search engine spiders and web crawlers from indexing them cleanly.
Therefore, restricting permalinks strictly to ASCII alphanumeric characters and hyphens is the recognized industry best practice.
Previously, article titles in their native language were used as slug values. However, copying those URLs resulted in heavily percent-encoded character strings (e.g., %E3%83%91%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E3%83%AA%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AF ), obscuring the page’s actual topic.
From an SEO and external API integration standpoint, multibyte characters in raw URLs frequently cause decoding failures or broken links across third-party platforms.
- Reference: SEO Impact of Multilingual Permalinks and URL Slugs | Grannet Marketing

Summary

This post briefly outlines the rationale and technical background behind transitioning all permalinks to alphanumeric slugs.
Modifying existing URLs at a later stage inevitably triggers 404 errors or necessitates extensive 301 redirect management; therefore, solidifying an ASCII-friendly slug strategy at the initial stage of site architecture is essential.