How to Move the Blog from Blogger to WordPress

Blogger is one of the prominent free blogging platform owned by Google. Because of limitation and restriction many bloggers switch to self-hosted WordPress website. If you have decided to switch your blogger site to WordPress blog than this guide will help you to move the blog from blogger to WordPress without losing your site ranking in search engine such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

What is WordPress?

WordPress the self-hosted blogging platform (WordPress.org) is the content management system (CMS) that become popular in short period of time. Started in 2003, it has occupied more than 35% of CMS shared market powering million of website that includes prominent company such as Microsoft. You can refer to this guide on what is WordPress to learn more.

Often beginners get confuse with self hosted WordPress.org and WordPress.com. WordPress.com is online hosting platform established in 2005 which has named similar WordPress. Because of limited features and high pricing while upgrading premium plan many WordPress.com user are switching to self hosted WordPress.org. You can learn the differences between WordPress.org vs WordPress.com.

Step-1: Choose the WordPress Hosting and Install WordPress

Setting up your new WordPress site needs custom domain name and best WordPress hosting. We recommend you to get the hosting service from Bluehost which provides you free custom domain name e.g. www.yourblog.com and high performing hosting server. Bluehost is also one of the hosting company recommended by WordPress.org itself.

Click on the button below and sign up for Bluehost plan. Bluehost will install your WordPress site automatically in few steps without hassle. You can follow our step by step guide on how to start a blog.

Step-2: Export the Blogger Content

After setting up your new WordPress site, its time to export all the content from the blogger blog. You need to login to your blogger dashboard and click on Settings then Other. In Import & Backup section click on Back up Content button at top-right.

You will see pop up message that will ask you to save the backup in your computer. This will export your blogger posts, pages and comments. Click on Save to your computer button.

Once exported you need to import blogger content to your new WordPress website.

Step-3: Import Blogger Content to WordPress

After exporting the content from the blogger site. You can import the blogger backup to your new WordPress site. You need to login to WordPress dashboard, you can do this by adding /wp-admin after your domain name in the browser e.g. www.yourblog.com/wp-admin. It will ask you the username and password which you have created while signing up Bluehost account.

After login to your WordPress dashboard. From the Tools click on Import.

You are in import page where you have install the importer plugins. You will see the blogger at the top where you have to click on install now link.

WordPress will install importer plugins in few seconds. After installation completes click on Run Importer link to import the blogger backup.

It will take you to the importer page where you have to upload the file that you have download from the blogger. Click on Choose File button and selected the destination of blogger file in your computer. In our case blogger backup is in download folder of the computer. Select the blogger backup file and open.

You will see blogger file in .xml format e.g. blog-12-23-2018.xml. Click on Upload file and Import button.

Depending on the file size it will take few minutes to upload the blogger data to your new WordPress site.

If the file size is too large then you will see an error while uploading. You need to increase the maximum the file upload limit to fix the error.

Now, you have to assign the author. Type the new author name or choose the existing one and click on submit button.

In few minutes blogger backup will completely import to your new WordPress site. You can see the imported posts going to Posts under All posts from WordPress dashboard.

Step-4: Setup Permalink in WordPress Blog

Permalinks is the combination of the domain name and post or page URLs (slug).

It is important to choose the same blogger’s URLs structure in WordPress. Click on Settings then Permalinks. You will see the options to choose the blog’s URLs structure. Choose Custom Structure then add following text in the box and click on Save Changes.

/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html

Step-5: Redirect Blogger Contents to New WordPress Blog

Redirecting old website to new website will bring all the existing traffic and tells search engine that you moved to the new website. It is very important that the visitors in the old website redirects properly to the exact same pages in the new WordPress website.

You need to install free redirection plugins called Blogger to WordPress. Install and activate the plugin in your new WordPress site. You can refer to this guide on how to install WordPress plugins.

Once installed, click on Tools then Blogger to WordPress Redirection. In the configuration screen click on Start Configuration, the plugin will find the blogger blog and show the blog name under the list of blogs. Click on Get Code button.

You will get the code snippet which need to be added in your old blogger blog for proper redirection and once added need to click on verify configuration button.

Copy the code and follow the steps below.

You need to login to your blogger dashboard. Click on Themes then Edit HTML.

You will see the HTML codes of the blogger themes which you can delete completely and paste the code you have copied from Blogger to WordPress redirection plugins. Click on Save theme button.

Now, you also need to setup redirection for mobile visitors from blogger to WordPress.

Again go to blogger dashboard and Click on Themes then Edit HTML. From the mobile preview click on Gear icon.

You will see the message to choose the mobile theme. Click on No Show desktop theme on mobile devices than click on Save button.

You have successfully redirected all the blogger visitors to your new WordPress site.

Step-6: Move the Blog Pages & RSS Feed from Blogger to WordPress

You have moved only the post from blogger to WordPress. Now you need to move the other content such as Pages and RSS feed to your new WordPress website.

Move Pages to WordPress

There is no tool in WordPress to move blogger pages automatically. You need to move Blogger pages manually. You can create the new page in WordPress blog and paste the content copying from your old Blogger blog.

Move RSS feeds to WordPress

This is the last steps to complete moving your blogger blog to WordPress blog. If you have RSS feeds subscribers then you need to tell that your blogger site has moved to new WordPress blog.

To do that login to Blogger site and click on Settings then Other. From the Post Feed Redirect URL under Site Feed section click on Add link.

Paste your WordPress feed address in Post Feed Redirect URL box. You WordPress feed URL looks like this https://yourblog.com/feed. Don’t forget to change yourblog.com with your domain name.

We hope this guide on how to move the blog from Blogger to WordPress is helpful. You may also like to see the guide on 13 most important things to do after installing WordPress.

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