Do you want to move your site from Blogger to WordPress without losing organic traffic?
Life using blogger is not very easy, but I always advice beginners not to start with WordPress, rather than start with blogger and get full 20-30% knowledge on websites or blogs. I was once a beginner like you and I started with blogger for two years before I migrated from blogger to WordPress without losing any google rankings. On this post I will show you the easy way to migrate from blogger to WordPress without losing any form of rankings or organic traffic either from Baidu, Google,Yandex or Bing.
Blogger is 2nd populous blogging platform next to WordPress. It was developed by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. The blogs are hosted by Google and generally accessed from a subdomain of blogspot.com. It has a lot of coding, so it not that easy to tamper with if you don’t know how to write codes. There are some limitations on blogger than WordPress. You don’t have free hand on blogger platform.
Reasons why you need to move from Blogger to WordPress
Contents
The first reason why you need to migrate from blogger to WordPress has been stated above and that is limitations.
Bloggers has few limitations which WordPress does not have. It gives you complete ownership of your website. It also allows you to add necessary features to grow and monetize your blog though with blogspot you can. Am not saying WordPress.com but WordPress.org, you can check the differences and similarities between wordpress.com and WordPress.org
How to Migrate from Blogger to WordPress platform
Firstly you have to read our guild on how to create a simple WordPress blog, you can get a very cheap hosting from namecheap
After you have follow our guild on how to set up a WordPress site and you have install WordPress on your dashboard, then follow the steps below;
Backup your content
You need to backup your content so as to avoid errors when exporting.
After that, your blogger blog’s content will be downloaded to your computer in an XML file. Once you have downloaded the full XML file,it might take a little while to download the XML file, then it is time to import your Blogger content into your WordPress site.
Install importer from WordPress plugins
You don’t have much to do here, just go to WordPress admin area and visit plugins » then install Importer. You can read our guild on step by step to install WordPress plugins.
Importing and Uploading the Downloaded XML file to WordPress
Once you have install and activate importer plugin on your WordPress dashboard, then you need to run the importer.
On the Import Blogger screen, WordPress will ask you to upload the XML file. This is the file that you downloaded from your blogger
Click on the choose file button and upload the XML file you downloaded earlier. Then, Upload file and import button to continue.
After importing, WordPress will request you to give a post author to just imported content, then you give your name. Therefore you have successfully import your content from blogger to WordPress.
Permarlinks setup
As a beginner moving from blogger to WordPress, you need to understand what permarlinks are. A permalink or permanent link is a URL that is intended to remain unchanged for many years into the future, yielding a hyperlink that is less susceptible to link rot. Permalinks are often rendered simply, that is, as clean URLs, to be easier to type and remember.
To set WordPress permalinks related to blogger links, click on Settings » Permalinks screen in your WordPress dashboard and choose the custom structure option. After that, you need to add the following text in the box next to the custom structure field.
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
The link above is a very close permalink which is related to blogger permalinks but might not correspond to the blogger URL. So add this following php code to your WordPress theme.
add_action( ‘init’, ‘wpb_update_slug’ );
function wpb_update_slug() {
global $wpdb;
$result = $wpdb->get_results(“SELECT post_id, meta_value FROM $wpdb->postmeta WHERE meta_key = ‘blogger_permalink’ “);
$wpdb->print_error();
foreach ($result as $row){
$slug = explode(“/”,$row->meta_value);
$slug = explode(“.”,$slug[3]);
$wpdb->query(“UPDATE $wpdb->posts SET post_name =’$slug[0]’ WHERE ID = ‘$row->post_id’ “);
}
echo “DONE”;
}
Note that the above code should be placed inside your theme function.php file on your WordPress site. After saving the file, go to one of your content to load the php file.
After loading, go back to your function.php file and remove the code.
Redirection from Blogger to WordPress
Its high time you redirect your permalink so as not to lose your Organic and SEO rankings. This is the most crucial point on switching from blogger to WordPress, if you are not careful and do this right, you might lose your organic keywords, ranking and traffic. Just follow the following instructions;
From your plugins dashboard install and activate blogger to WordPress redirection. Visit Tools » Blogger to WordPress Redirection page and click on the ‘Start Configuration’ button. It will tell u to copy a generated code, copy the code and log back to your blogger dashboard
Input the copied code into your blogger theme editor HTML code on your blogger dashboard. You just select all the codes on that theme and delete then paste the new codes generated by blogger to WordPress redirection. Then save.
Mobile User Redirection
This is the smallest step you have to take in setting up your blogger to WordPress redirection, just click theme » click the gear button below mobile preview. It will bring three list of option where you will have to click on, select No. Show desktop theme on mobile devices’ option then save.
Coping contents from Blogger to WordPress
You need to move all other content that was not moved when importing contents from your blogger to WordPress such contact us, about us, privacy policy and if you have disclaimer on your blogger. This content are not moved because they are not on post, they are pages on your blogger blogs, you can read our guild on difference between WordPress post and WordPress pages. So you create a page for it on your WordPress dash board and then you save.
You might have issues like
Now you will come across another issue like having blogger pages URLs that look like this:
https://.godzgeneral.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html
And your WordPress page URL will look like this:
http://godzgeneral.com/about-us
Dont panic, you will use redirection plugin installed to redirect your blogger pages URL to WordPress page. Some SEO Plugins comes with it such as yoast SEO and Rankmath. You can read our guild on step by step WordPress SEO guild for beginners.
Frequently Questions asked by beginners on blogger to WordPress Migration
Won’t I lose any organic traffic when moving my contents
You won’t if you follow our guild, just follow the above steps, if you encounter any issue please use our comment session, we will be happy to help you out.
Some of my pages are not redirecting?
As I have stated above you need to use redirection plugins to redirect your pages content. Install the plugins manually or use your SEO tools to set it up
Conclusion
As I have stated above, if you have any issue on this please use our comment session or use our Facebook page, we will be happy to reply you.