For the past 24 Hours, I have been busy moving my blog from blogger to WordPress platform and I must confess it was not as easy as I thought especially when reading most of how to transfer your blogger to WordPress articles online because most of them don’t work for me.

I have come to know that moving a blog from Google’s blogger to WordPress< is not just about importing and exporting but you will as well think about retaining your current rankings so that you don’t lose all your traffic all in the name of migrating to WordPress from Blogger.

The good news is that I successfully moved my blog from blogger to self-hosted WordPress platform and am writing this to tell you how I did it and the errors I encountered during the process and how I finally fixed them which will enable you to learn how to move your blog from blogger to WordPress easily.

Why I decided to Move from Blogger to WordPress

Before the step by step guide on how to migrate from Blogger to WordPress, there are few questions I need to answer you and one of them is why do I have to move my blog to WordPress.

I started the blog in question in 2016 using normal blogger domain which looks like, example .blogspot. com and later on I bought my own custom domain and redirected the old blogspot domain to my custom domain.

I was very okay with my blog both the ranking and everything but my major problem is that I can’t do many things with blogger and if you want to add certain features you will need to edit the template while in WordPress you can just download, install and active a plugin to do almost anything you want without learning any coding and designing.

And to be serious with my business I needed to migrate to WordPress so that I can move my blog to the next level and that is why I choose to go for something better

Step by Step Guide on how I migrated from Blogger to WordPress
It’s the time to discuss and learn how to transfer your blog from blogger to WordPress and as I said earlier, this process is not just about importing and exporting your blogger to WordPress because there are other things you need to take care of.

Step 1
I believe you have finally decided to move your blog to WordPress and the first move is to find a good reliable WordPress hosting and domain name if you don’t have one already, You can try Inmotion WordPress Hosting because that is what I use and you will be happy with them.

Note

If you have already bought and directed your custom domain name you need to disconnect it from blogger now since you have your own hosting account and you can do that by visiting www.blogger.com and then navigate down to Settings, you will see your domain name, click the small X icon by the right side to remove the connection between blogger and your domain.

After disconnecting your domain, you need to point your domain to your new hosting account by changing your domain Nameservers.

To change your domain nameservers simply go to your domain name registrar (Where you bought the domain) and login to your account and then to domain settings where you can be able to add your new nameservers.

If you host with [Inmotion hosting all you need is to add the following name servers

Hostname IP Address
ns1.inmotionhosting.com 74.124.210.242
ns2.inmotionhosting.com 70.39.150.2

Or read DNS and Nameserver Changes to learn more and after that, it might take between 24 to 48 hours for the domain to fully propagate to the new server.

Step 2

After you might have successfully acquired domain and hosting the next thing is to install WordPress on your server if you don’t know how to install WordPress ask your hosting provider to help you install WordPress on your server or read this guide provided by Inmotion hosting Getting Started: How to Install WordPress

Step 3

Now you have successfully installed WordPress, the next thing to do is to design your blog to look and function the way you wish, there are many good free and paid WordPress template to choose from even if you don’t have any web designing skill.

Step 4
Once you okay with your new WordPress site, click on plugin and select add New as you can see below;

Search for the plugin called Blogger Importer Extended

Install and activate the blogger importer extended and then follow the same method to search for another plugin called Blogger 301 redirect we will be needing them later.

Blogger importer extended will import your blogger content and images while Blogger 301 redirect handles the redirections to make sure you don’t lose your traffic and ranking.

Step 5
In this step, you need to backup your blogger content and download it to your computer desktop or any folder you can easily remember but if you are not familiar on how to do that simply go to your blogger dashboard/settings/other/ and you will see import and backup content

Select backup content and download the backup file, save it where you can remember so that you don’t need to be looking for it when you need it.

Step 6
Let assume you have the backup, now go back to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to plugins/installed plugins/ and then to the Blogger Importer Extended plugin which you have installed and activated.

Looking at the plugin you will see the start button, click on it.

Once you click on start you will be linked to your blogger directly or manually select the blogger backup you downloaded in step 5 and select import content, images and pages.

Click import and within few seconds all your blogger post, images and pages will be present in your newly installed WordPress blog.

Now, what next?

Just like I said, moving your blog from blogger to WordPress is not just importing and exporting but about retaining your old visitors and search engine rankings because some links are surely going to break and that is where we need to do some work if you want to retain your search engine rankings.

Remember I mentioned a WordPress plugin that can help you retain your ranking and visitors by redirecting them to the right pages which helps you retain your rankings and traffic.

Before discussing about Blogger 301 redirect plugin, you need to do one more thing, setting your WordPress permalink to match with your blogger, example if you are were using something like

www. example .com/2018/3/your post title/ or something like www.example. blogspot .com/2018/03/your post title/

it simply means that your blogger permalinks are set to include the year and day of the post and you need to set something similar but if you want it to look entirely different then you will need to play a lot with your htaccess to do the required redirections but if you don’t want to do any changes then set your WordPress permalink to month and name, though the 301 redirect plugin can do the job for you

Using 301 blogger redirect WordPress plugin

Install and activate the plugin and navigate to settings/301 blogger redirect dashboard and follow the instructions listed on the 301 blogger redirect dashboard to properly redirect all your old blogger post to your new WordPress blog but I will help you a bit to understand the instructions you need to follow.

Redirecting blogger post to WordPress

If you understand all the instructions listed on 301 blogger redirect dashboard then you might not need to read this but if you don’t then continue reading.

Method 1: Using New Blogger Template

⇒ Login to your Blogger Dashboard
⇒ Goto Template > Backup/Restore button (Top right) Download Full Template (To take a backup of your template)
⇒ After taking backup Click Edit HTML (click Proceed if asked)
⇒ Replace the code of your blogger template with the code below

[sourcecode language=”plain”]<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html expr:dir=’data:blog.languageDirection’ lang=’en’ xml:lang=’en’ xmlns=’http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml’ xmlns:b=’http://www.google.com/2005/gml/b’ xmlns:data=’http://www.google.com/2005/gml/data’ xmlns:expr=’http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr’ xmlns:fb=’http://ogp.me/ns/fb#’ xmlns:og=’http://ogp.me/ns#’>
<head profile=’http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/’>
<title><data:blog.title/></title>
<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == "index"’>
<link rel=’canonical’ href=’https://www. example .com/’ />
<meta content=’0;url=https://www. example. com/’ http-equiv=’refresh’/>
<b:else/>
<link rel=’canonical’ expr:href=’"https://www. example. com/?br=" + data:blog.url’ />
<meta expr:content=’"0;url=https://www. example. com/?br=" + data:blog.url’ http-equiv=’refresh’/>
</b:if>
<script type=’text/javascript’>
var wpblog = "https://www. example. com/?br=";
wpblog = wpblog + window.location.href.replace(‘http:’,”);
window.location.replace(wpblog);
</script>
<b:skin><![CDATA[/*
———————————————–
Blogger Template Style
Name: Blogger 301 redirect
Designer: Sudipto Pratap Mahato
URL: http://techxt.com
Started: 07:41 1/1/2013
———————————————– */
/*

]]></b:skin>
</head>
<body>
<b:section id=’header’ showaddelement=’no’>
<b:widget id=’Header1′ locked=’true’ title=’techxt (Header)’ type=’Header’/>
</b:section>

<div>
<p>This page has found a new home </p>
<a href=’https://www. example. com/’><data:blog.title/></a>
<a expr:href=’"https://www. example. com/?br=" + data:blog.url’ />
</div>
<a href=’http://techxt.com/?’>Blogger 301 Redirect Plugin</a>
</body>
</html></code>[/sourcecode]

Note

Change all www. example. com to your new WordPress blog domain name

⇒ Finally click Save Template changes (Click Delete Widgets if asked) > Click Close
Now click the Gear Icon below the Mobile template
Select No. Show desktop template on mobile devices. > Click Save

Method 2: Using Classic Template

⇒ Login to your Blogger Dashboard
⇒ Goto Template > Backup/Restore button (Top right) Download Full Template (To take a backup of your template)
⇒ Then Scroll down to the bottom of the page click Revert to classic templates (link at the bottom of the page) and select OK to revert to classic template
⇒ Replace the code of your blogger template with the code below.

[sourcecode language=”plain”] <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en" dir="<$BlogLanguageDirection$>">
<head><title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>
<script type="text/javascript">
var wpblog = "https://www. example2 .com/?br=";
wpblog = wpblog + window.location.href.replace(‘http:’,”);
<MainorArchivePage>window.location.href="https://www. example2 .com/"</MainOrArchivePage>
<Blogger><ItemPage>window.location.href=wpblog</ItemPage></Blogger>
</script>
<MainPage><link rel="canonical" href="https://www. example2. com/" /></MainPage>
<Blogger><ItemPage><link rel="canonical" href="https://www. example2. com/?br=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" /></ItemPage></Blogger>
<MainorArchivePage><meta content=’0;url=https://www. example2 .com/’ http-equiv=’refresh’/></MainOrArchivePage>
<Blogger><ItemPage><meta content=’0;url=https://www. example2 .com/?br=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>’ http-equiv=’refresh’/></ItemPage></Blogger>
</head>
<body>
<div>
<p>This page has found a new home </p>
<h1><MainOrArchivePage><a href="https://www. example2. com/"><$BlogTitle$></a></MainOrArchivePage>
<Blogger><ItemPage><a href="https://www. example2. com/?br=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"><$BlogItemTitle$></a></ItemPage></Blogger></h1>
</div>
<a href=’http://techxt.com/?’>Blogger 301 Redirect Plugin</a>
</body></html>[/sourcecode] Note

Change all www. example2 .com to your new WordPress blog domain name

⇒ Finally, click Save Template changes

To test your settings

Click on links to see Google indexed pages of your blog.
To check redirections click on your site links from Google search results. All links should get properly redirected to your new site respective posts.

Finally, find and install a WordPress plugin called redirection to monitor error 404 pages on your website and fix them with the right redirection commands

If you need more help moving your blog from blogger to WordPress, don’t hesitate to ask for help