How to Switch From Blogger to WordPress Without Losing Google Rankings

Many bloggers begin their journey on Blogger because it’s a free and straightforward platform. However, as your blog grows, you might start feeling restricted by its limited features.

Switching to WordPress can open up a world of possibilities with its extensive capabilities. But there’s a common concern about making this move: the potential loss of Google rankings.

This article will guide you through the process of transitioning from Blogger to WordPress. We will focus on how to do it correctly, making sure you keep your valuable Google rankings intact.

Our goal is to help you upgrade your blogging platform without sacrificing the SEO efforts you’ve already put into your site.

Why Move From Blogger to WordPress?

Blogger is a popular blogging platform created by Google. It allows anyone to create a free blog using their Google account.

However, many beginners soon realize that there are a lot of limitations on what they can do with their free Blogger blog.

WordPress, on the other hand, gives you complete ownership of your website. It also allows you to add the necessary features to grow your blog and monetize your content. Plus, you can perform all the SEO optimizations to rank higher. We have created a detailed side-by-side comparison of WordPress vs. Blogger.

It’s important to note that when we say WordPress, we are talking about self-hosted WordPress.org, which should NOT be confused with WordPress.com, which is a hosted solution that has its own limitations. For details, see our article on the difference between Wordpress.com vs. WordPress.org.

WordPress.org is the popular “WordPress” platform that you have likely heard about because it powers 43% of all websites on the internet.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to properly move from Blogger to WordPress while preserving your Google search rankings and website traffic.

Here are the steps that we will use to transfer from Blogger to WordPress:

Ready? Let’s get started.

Video Tutorial

If you don’t want to watch the video tutorial, then you can continue reading the text version below.

Step 1: Sign Up for WordPress Hosting

To get started with WordPress, you will need a domain name and web hosting.

For a quick reminder, a domain name is your website’s address that people type to get to your blog, and web hosting is where your website files are stored. Both of these are a MUST-HAVE to create any type of blog or website.

With that said, we recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world, and they are an officially recommended WordPress hosting partner.

Because WPBeginner is the largest WordPress resource site, they have agreed to offer our readers a free domain name and a 60% discount on hosting. Basically, you can get started for just $1.99 per month.

If, for some reason, you would prefer to go with a Bluehost alternative, then we recommend using either SiteGround or Hostinger because both are excellent solutions.

Once you have signed up for the WordPress hosting plan and set up your domain name, you can go ahead to the WordPress installation step.

If you sign up with Bluehost using our link above, then they will install WordPress for you automatically.

If you used a different WordPress hosting provider, then you need to install WordPress by following our ultimate guide on how to install WordPress.

After you have installed WordPress, it is time to move your content from Blogger to WordPress.

Bonus Free Offer: Since a lot of you asked for this, we are now offering a free Blogger to WordPress migration service as part of our free WordPress blog setup service. This means one of our expert team members will do the entire migration for you (100% free). Yes, you can literally switch from Blogger to WordPress without any risk.

Note: Our free blogger migration service is for smaller blogs that have less than 1000 blog posts. We can offer a migration service for larger blogger sites, but that will be a paid service.

However, if you are someone who likes learning and doing things yourself, then you can follow our step-by-step tutorial below.

Step 1: Export Your Blogger Blog

The first thing you need to do is export your Blogger blog’s content.

You can do this by visiting the Blogger website and logging into your account dashboard.

After that, go to the Settings page. Scroll down to the ‘Manage Blog’ section, and click the ‘Back up Content’ button.

This will bring up a popup showing what exactly is included in the Blogger backup.

You need to click on the ‘Download’ button to continue.

Your Blogger blog’s content will be downloaded to your computer in an XML file.

Once the download is complete, it is time to import your Blogger content into your WordPress site.

Step 2: Import Blogger to WordPress

To start importing your Blogger site into WordPress, log in to your WordPress admin area and visit Tools » Import.

On the Import page, go ahead and click on the ‘Install Now’ link below Blogger.

WordPress will now download and install the Blogger Importer plugin for you.

Once it has finished installing, you need to click on the ‘Run Importer’ link to continue.

WordPress will ask you to upload the XML file on the Import Blogger screen. This is the file that you downloaded in Step 1.

Simply click the ‘Choose File’ button and upload the XML file you downloaded earlier.

Next, click on the ‘Upload file and import’ button to continue.

WordPress will now upload the import file. If your import file is too large, then you may see an error message.

In this case, you will need to increase your maximum file upload limit. If your file is small, then you won’t see any errors.

Next, you will be asked to assign posts to an author. If you have multiple authors on your Blogger blog, then you can create a new user account for each author. You can also assign these posts to existing authors on your WordPress website.

After making your selection, click on the ‘Submit’ button to continue.

WordPress will import all content from the Blogger export file to your WordPress site. You can view the content by visiting the Posts » All Posts page.

Step 3: Setting Up Permalinks

Permalinks is the term used for the URL structure of individual pages. WordPress comes with a feature that allows you to set up an SEO-friendly URL structure.

Since you are importing content from Blogger, you need your URL structure to be as close to your old Blogger site’s URL structure as possible.

To set permalinks, you need to go to Settings » Permalinks 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

This permalink structure makes your blog post URLs similar to the URLs on your old Blogger blog.

However, sometimes your blog post URL, also known as a slug in WordPress, will not match the slugs used by Blogger.

To fix this, you will need to create and run a little code snippet.

We recommend adding this PHP code using the WPCode plugin. It is the safest way to add custom code to your WordPress website. For more details, please see our guide on how to copy and paste code snippets in WordPress.

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";

}

After saving the code, you just need to visit any page on your WordPress site to trigger this script.

Important: After the script has run, don’t forget to disable or delete it from your WPCode library because it only needs to run once.

Bonus Free Offer: Don’t want to deal with code? We have got you covered. Since many of you asked for this, we are now offering a free Blogger to WordPress migration service as part of our free WordPress blog setup service.

This means one of our expert team members will do the entire migration for you (100% free). Yes, you can literally switch from Blogger to WordPress without any risk.

Step 4: Set Up Redirects From Blogger to WordPress

The most important step in moving any website is to set up proper redirection so that you don’t lose any existing traffic or SEO rankings. You can see our ultimate WordPress SEO migration checklist for more details.

Note: If your Blogger blog has its own custom domain instead of blogspot.com, you may need to point your domain nameservers to your hosting provider. For instructions, please follow our tutorial on how to switch custom domain blogger blog to WordPress.

The crucial part of the redirection is to ensure that your users land on the same page on the new domain they were trying to access on the old site.

At the same time, you also need to ensure that search engines understand that your website is moved to this new location.

You need to install and activate the Blogger to WordPress Redirection plugin to do that. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Tools » Blogger to WordPress Redirection page and click on the ‘Start Configuration’ button.

The plugin will now detect the URL of your Blogger blog and show you the option to get a redirection code. Go ahead and click on the ‘Get Code’ button next to your Blogger URL.

It will now generate a code snippet that you need to properly redirect users from your old Blogger blog to your new WordPress site.

Next, you need to log in to your Blogger dashboard and go to the ‘Themes’ page. Click on the dropdown arrow on the ‘Customize’ button next to your theme, and then select the ‘Edit HTML’ option.

Blogger will now display the custom HTML code for your theme template. If you made any customizations to your Blogger theme, then you may want to copy the code and save it on your computer as a backup.

Otherwise, you can just go ahead and delete everything. After that, copy the code displayed by the plugin on your WordPress site and paste it into your Blogger theme editor.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save theme’ button to store your changes.

Next, we need to set up redirects for mobile users.

You need to go back to the Themes page in your Blogger blog’s dashboard. This time you need to click on the gear button below the mobile preview of your blog.

This will bring up a popup where you need to select the ‘No. Show desktop theme on mobile devices’ option.

Then, click on the ‘Save’ button.

That’s all, your Blogger blog will now redirect all your blog visitors to your new WordPress blog.

Alternatively, you can also use All in One SEO (AIOSEO) to redirect posts and pages from Blogger to WordPress. The plugin offers a powerful redirection manager feature that lets you set up full site redirects to your new site.

Plus, you can enable 404 error tracking and catch any broken links that may occur when moving your site to WordPress. This will help improve the user experience, and you won’t lose keyword rankings.

Step 5: Moving Other Content From Blogger to WordPress

In this step, we will move the remaining content from the old blog on Blogger to your new WordPress blog. This may require some manual work, depending on the settings/content of your blog.

1. Moving Pages From Blogger to WordPress

WordPress’s Blogger importer tool only imports Blogger posts and ignores pages.

To move your pages into WordPress, you will have to edit each page in your Blogger blog, copy its contents, and then manually create a page in WordPress.

To learn more about pages, see our article on the difference between posts vs. pages in WordPress.

Now, you will come across another issue. The Blogger pages have URLs that look like this:

http://example.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html

Your WordPress page URL will look like this:

http://example.com/about-us

To fix this, you will need to use the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin. For instructions, please see our beginner’s guide on creating redirects in WordPress.

2. Widgets

Like Blogger, some WordPress themes also utilize widgets to add content to your blog’s sidebar.

To add widgets, you need to visit the Appearance » Widgets page in your WordPress dashboard and simply drag/drop widgets into the sidebars. For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to add and use widgets in Wordpress.

If you are looking for a specific widget you don’t see in WordPress by default, then you likely need a WordPress plugin. You can search WPBeginner’s best WordPress plugin category to find the functionality you want.

3. RSS Feeds

Search engines and users who subscribe to your blog posts via RSS feeds will still be able to find your blog. However, they will not get any new content.

To fix this, visit the Settings page under your Blogger account. Next, scroll down to the ‘Site feed’ section and click on ‘Post feed redirect URL’.

This will bring up a popup where you need to add the RSS feed URL of your WordPress website.

Your WordPress feed URL will look like this:

http://example.com/feed

Don’t forget to replace example.com with your own domain name.

Click on the ‘Save’ button to add the URL and save your settings.

Step 6. Things to Do After Migrating From Blogger to WordPress

Now that you have successfully moved your Blogger blog to WordPress, let’s take a look at what else you can do to improve your blog.

We have created a checklist of the most important things you need to do after installing WordPress.

WordPress is quite easy to use. However, you’ll occasionally discover new things that you may need help with. This is where WPBeginner comes in.

WPBeginner is the largest free WordPress resource site in the world. We regularly publish tutorials and guides written specifically for bloggers and small businesses.

Here are some of the useful resources that you will find on WPBeginner (all of them are free):

• WPBeginner Blog – The central place for all our WordPress tutorials and guides.
• WPBeginner Dictionary – Our WordPress glossary is the best place to familiarize yourself with the WordPress lingo
• WPBeginner Videos – New WordPress users can start with these step-by-step videos to master WordPress.
• WPBeginner on YouTube – Need more video instructions? Subscribe to our YouTube channel with more than 291,000 subscribers and 50 Million+ views.
• WPBeginner Blueprint – Check out the plugins, tools, and services that we use on WPBeginner.
• WPBeginner Deals – Exclusive discounts on WordPress products and services for WPBeginner users.

We hope this article helped you switch from Blogger to WordPress without affecting your Google search rankings. You may also want to see our guide to which WordPress plan you should use or the most common WordPress myths debunked.

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