If you have a blog on blogger, example (abc.blogspot.com), then it is a great idea to alleviate its level by getting it transferred to a self-hosted WordPress platform with your preferred domain name. If this is what you want to do, then you might be wondering about the easiest way of doing this!
Below mentioned are extremely simple steps for migrating your blog from Blogger to WordPress without losing your Google search traffic and your existing subscribers:
WordPress provides with a simple one-click option for importing all the blog posts and the reader comments from Blogger into the new WordPress blog. However, there is much more to migration apart from just transferring the content. You will have to consider the points mentioned below:
- Some of your blog posts on the old blogspot blog might be ranking high in search engines for some keywords. However, once you move these posts, to the new WordPress blog, you will lose the organic search traffic as the permalinks or URLs of the blog posts will change.
- People often come to your blog through sources like search engines, browser bookmarks and through other websites linked to your blog pages. In case you migrate to WordPress, the incoming traffic to your Blogger blog will not be automatically redirected to the new WordPress blog.
- When you switch from Blogger to WordPress, the existing readers who have subscribed to the RSS feed of your Blogger blog might be lost forever if they do not manually subscribe to your new WordPress blog feed.
The importer tool provided by WordPress will only transfer the content from Blogger to WordPress. However, if you would also like to take care of the issues mentioned above, then follow the step-by-step tutorial mentioned below. It takes approximately 5-10 minutes for completing the transfer process successfully. This method will also help you in transferring Google juice from the old Blogspot blog to the new WordPress blog.
Steps To Move Your Blog Blog From Blogger To WordPress:
Before you start with the migration process; backup your Blogger blog to be on a safer side. The backup should include the XML template, blog posts and the comments as well.
After Creating The Backup, Follow The Steps Mentioned Bellow:
- Register a new domain name; buy the appropriate web hosting package for your blog and install WordPress on the new domain.
- Go to your WordPress Admin dashboard and under the Tools section, you will find an option ‘Import’, select the ‘Blogger’ option there. Authorize WordPress to access your Blogger platform, select your blogspot blog. After doing this, all your Blogger posts and comments will be transferred to your new WordPress blog within minutes.
- Now open the ‘WordPress themes editor’, you will find this option under the tab ‘Appearance’. Go to ‘WordPress themes editor’ and open the ‘functions.php’ file for editing. Most of the WordPress themes have a functions.php file; and in case you don’t see this file, you can manually upload it to your WordPress theme folder through cPanel or FTP. Copy-paste the snippets code mentioned below at the beginning of the functions.php file and then click on the ‘Update File’ option in order to save the changes.
1. <?php
2.
3. function labnol_blogger_query_vars_filter( $vars ) {
4. $vars[] = “blogger”;
5. return $vars;
6. }
7.
8. add_filter(‘query_vars’, ‘labnol_blogger_query_vars_filter’);
9.
10. function labnol_blogger_template_redirect() {
11. global $wp_query;
12. $blogger = $wp_query->query_vars[‘blogger’];
13. if ( isset ( $blogger ) ) {
14. wp_redirect( labnol_get_wordpress_url ( $blogger ) , 301 );
15. exit;
16. }
17. }
18.
19. add_action( ‘template_redirect’, ‘labnol_blogger_template_redirect’ );
20.
21. function labnol_get_wordpress_url($blogger_slug) {
22. global $wpdb;
23. if ( preg_match(‘@^(?:https?://)?([^/]+)(.*)@i’, $blogger_slug, $matches) ) {
24. $q = “SELECT guid FROM $wpdb->posts LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta
25. ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->postmeta.post_id)
26. WHERE $wpdb->postmeta.meta_key=’blogger_permalink’
27. AND $wpdb->postmeta.meta_value=’$matches[2]'”;
28. $wp_url = $wpdb->get_var($q);
29. }
30. return $wp_url ? $wp_url : home_url();
31. }
32.
33. ?>
- Go to your Blogger dashboard and select the template. Scroll down the templates page and select the option ‘Revert to Classic Templates’. This will switch the Blog based XML editor to the tag based templates.
- Copy-paste the snippet mentioned below in your Blogger template editor. Save the changes after doing that.
1. <html>
2. <head>
3. <title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>
4. <script>
5. <MainOrArchivePage>
6. window.location.href=’http://labnol.org/’
7. </MainOrArchivePage>
8. <Blogger> <ItemPage>
9. window.location.href=’http://labnol.org/?q=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>’
10. </ItemPage> </Blogger>
11. </script>
12. <MainPage>
13. <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://labnol.org/” />
14. </MainPage>
15. <Blogger><ItemPage>
16. <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://labnol.org/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>” />
17. </ItemPage></Blogger>
18. </head>
19. <body>
20. <MainOrArchivePage>
21. <h1><a href=”http://labnol.org”><$BlogTitle$></a></h1>
22. </MainOrArchivePage>
23. <Blogger><ItemPage>
24. <h1>
25. <a href=”http://labnol.org/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>”>
26. <$BlogItemTitle$>
27. </a>
28. </h1>
29. <$BlogItemBody$>
30. </ItemPage></Blogger>
31. </body>
32. </html>
You are almost done! Access any page of your old Blogger blog and it should redirect to the corresponding WordPress page. You will have to use a permanent 301 redirect on the WordPress website and this is the way in which all the Google juice and Page Rank will pass on to your new WordPress website pages.
The method mentioned above works for the regular blogspot.com URLs and it also works for the country-specific blogger domains.
The Blogger import tool only moves the posts and comments from Blogger to WordPress but it does not move the images. This is perfectly fine because the image URLs in the imported WordPress posts are still pointing to blogspot.com where the images were originally located and as a result of this, nothing will break.
Switch The RSS Feed From Blogger To WordPress
When you transfer your blog from Blogger to WordPress, the URL of your RSS feed will be changed as well. Go to Blogger > Settings > Other and select the option – ‘Post Feed Redirect URL’ present under ‘Site Feed’. Here you can enter the web address of your new WordPress blog RSS feed and the existing RSS subscriber will automatically redirect to your earlier feed.
In case you are using ‘FeedBurner’, all you have to do is replace the source from Blogger RSS feed to your new WordPress blog feed.
You Have Successfully Migrated Your Blog From Blogger To WordPress! What’s Next?
- Now that your new WordPress website is up and running, along with all the old Blogger posts, here are few other important aspects that you should take care of:
- Add the new WordPress website to Google Webmaster, verify the website ownership and submit an XML sitemap listing URL on your new website.
- Implement Google Authorship so that your Google profile gets authoritative with your posts and you are established as an author.
- Install the essential plugins for enhancing the efficiency of your WordPress website.
