As a webmaster with over 15 years of experience building and moving websites, I‘ve helped dozens of bloggers switch from Blogger over to WordPress.
While Blogger serves a great starting point, most bloggers quickly feel limited by its lack of customization and ownership. The good news is that transitioning to WordPress is straightforward if you follow the proper steps to preserve your SEO and traffic.
In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll walk you through exactly how to:
- Export your content from Blogger
- Import it into a new WordPress site
- Set up proper redirects
- And optimize your SEO during the transition
My goal is to arm you with a complete understanding of the process and best practices to make your Blogger to WordPress migration smooth and successful.
Contents
Why I Recommend Switching From Blogger to WordPress
Let‘s start by looking at some of the key limitations of Blogger that spur most bloggers to make the switch:
Lack of Customization
Blogger offers very limited design and layout options compared to WordPress. With Blogger, you‘re largely stuck with one of their generic templates.
WordPress has literally thousands of themes, both free and paid, giving you control to customize the look and feel of your site.
No Own Domain Name
Your Blogger site will always be a subdomain (yourname.blogspot.com) without the ability to use your own domain name.
With WordPress, you can register any domain you want like yourname.com and brand your site as your own.
Restrictions on Monetization
Adding ways to monetize your site like ads and affiliate links is much more difficult on Blogger. You‘re reliant on what Blogger has enabled.
WordPress gives you full control to add any type of monetization you want through plugins, allowing you to earn money from your hard work.
Limited SEO Control
Optimizing your Blogger site for search engines is challenging since you have little control over titling, metadata, URLs, etc.
WordPress makes SEO easy. You can optimize all aspects of your site to improve search rankings and traffic.
No Access to Source Code
You have no direct access to edit code on Blogger which severely limits advanced customization.
The open-source WordPress platform allows digging into the code for maximum flexibility and customization.
Limited Site Security
Blogger handles security for you, but has faced threats like malware injections in the past.
WordPress gives you control over security with tools like two-factor authentication, backups, and scanning for vulnerabilities.
No Access to Site Analytics
On Blogger, you‘re limited to the basic analytics they provide. You have no access to raw traffic data.
WordPress allows connecting Google Analytics for powerful, customizable analytics and stats to understand your audience.
According to BuiltWith, WordPress powers 43% of all websites as of 2024, compared to just 0.8% for Blogger. The numbers speak for themselves.
While Blogger serves its purpose for new bloggers, most hit its limitations fairly quickly. Transitioning to WordPress is a natural evolution to gain full control and unlock more possibilities for your website.
Step-by-Step Guide to Migrate From Blogger to WordPress
Let‘s dig into the step-by-step process for properly moving from Blogger to WordPress:
Get WordPress Hosting and Domain
Since WordPress runs on a web hosting server, your first step is finding a hosting provider and registering a custom domain name.
I recommend using a well-known managed WordPress host like Bluehost, SiteGround, or HostGator. The small extra cost is worth it for the speed, security, and support they provide.
Most offer quick one-click installers to get WordPress set up on your account in under 5 minutes.
Install WordPress on Your Web Host
Once you have your web hosting service, it‘s time to install WordPress.
If you used the recommended hosts above, you can simply use their auto-installer tool to get up and running with just a few clicks.
If installing manually, follow my step-by-step guide on how to install WordPress. It just takes about 5-10 minutes.
Once installed, your fresh WordPress site will be ready for migration!
Export Your Content From Blogger
Next, you need to extract all your content from Blogger to prepare it for import into WordPress.
Log into your Blogger account, go to Settings > Other and click on "Back up content." This exports your posts, pages, comments, etc into an XML file.
Click Download and save this XML backup file somewhere convenient on your computer. It contains everything we need to transfer into WordPress.
Import Your Blogger Content Into WordPress
With your Blogger data exported, it‘s time to get it into WordPress:
-
In your new WordPress dashboard, go to Tools > Import
-
Find the Blogger importer option and click Install Now.
-
Once activated, click Run Importer. It will prompt you to upload the XML file you exported from Blogger.
-
Upload the Blogger XML backup and run the import. All your posts, comments, etc will get populated in WordPress!
The importer works smoothly in most cases. If you run into any hiccups, I have a more detailed guide on importing from Blogger to WordPress that covers troubleshooting.
One catch with the Blogger importer is that it only brings over your post content, not pages.
To recreate pages like About, Contact, etc – create new pages in WordPress using the same titles as on Blogger. Publish them and ensure any text/images get moved over.
Next, set up your navigation menu under Appearance > Menus:
- Create a new menu
- Add links to your newly created WordPress pages
- Set as the Primary Menu so it displays in your theme header
This will mimic the site navigation you had on Blogger.
Redirect Blogger to WordPress
This next part is crucial – you need to properly redirect your Blogger site to the new WordPress site.
If done incorrectly, your traffic and rankings will PLUMMET after moving since links will break.
Here are two ways to safely redirect from Blogger to WordPress:
Option 1)
The easiest method is using the Redirection plugin. Install it on your WordPress site, enter your old Blogger URL under the migration wizard, and copy the generated redirection code.
Paste this into your Blogger template‘s HTML section so all traffic heading to the old Blogger URLs gets redirected to your new WordPress URLs.
Option 2)
For full control, add a 301 redirect in your Blogger template going to your new WordPress site:
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh"
content="0;url=http://new-wordpress-site.com">
</head>This immediately redirects any Blogger traffic to your WordPress site with a 301 permanent redirect to pass link equity.
I walk through both redirect methods in more detail in my Blogger to WordPress migration guide here.
Update Sitemaps and Feeds
To point search engines to your new WordPress site, generate and submit an XML sitemap:
- Install the Yoast SEO plugin
- Go to Features > XML Sitemaps
- Click Submit Sitemap to Search Engines
Next, in Blogger under Settings, update your Feed Redirect URL to point to your new WordPress feed URL:
https://yourdomain.com/feed
This passes any syndicated traffic from RSS feeds over to WordPress.
Optimize SEO
With your site migrated, take advantage of WordPress flexibility to optimize SEO:
- Enable user-friendly permalinks like
/post-name/instead of default URLs. - Update page title tags and meta descriptions for each post/page.
- Install Yoast SEO or Rank Math plugin to further optimize your site.
- Consider a managed SEO service to help improve search rankings.
Investing in SEO optimization now will pay dividends in the long run with a well-optimized WordPress site.
Conclusion
Switching your website from Blogger to WordPress requires careful steps to preserve your Google rankings and redirect traffic properly. But the benefits are well worth it!
The key is:
- Exporting your Blogger content
- Importing it into WordPress
- Setting up 301 redirects
- And updating sitemaps/feeds to point to the new site
Follow this guide and you can transition seamlessly. Just take it slow and be cautious at each step.
I hope this guide gives you the confidence to finally make the jump! Let me know if you have any other questions. Happy WordPressing!
