10 Step Guide To Moving From Blogger (Blogspot) to Wordpress with a 301
Move from Blogger to Wordpress with a 301
Moving from blogspot.com subdomain hosted with Blogger and want to make the upgrade to your own server with Wordpress? I had to do this for a client and had a lot of trouble finding a guide to do this in a way that would definitely preserve SEO.
Using this blogger to wordpress migration guide, Google will re-index your site using your new top-level domain, all your old posts/pages will be re-indexed, and anyone visiting your old posts or website will be redirected to the new corresponding location. Sounds to good to be true?
In this guide we will use 301s to redirect from blogspot to your new domain as that’s only way to be sure that Google and other search engines will index your website’s new location.
1. First things first, we need to set up our top-level domain as a Blogger custom domain. To do this, you need to modify your new domain’s DNS to point to the Blogger service. Once the DNS is set up, you simply add your custom domain to your blogger domain settings. Here are the detailed instructions on how to add a custom domain to blogger.
The good news: When people visit your old site, people will be redirected to the new custom domain. Even old posts/pages will redirect to the correct locations.
The really good news: Blogger adds a 301 redirect on your old blogspot subdomain so that Google and other SE will know that your site has permanently moved. This means that Google will start replacing old links in their database with the new pretty TLD links. (Example: mywebsite.blogger.com/hello-everyone.html will be indexed as mywebsite.com/hello-everyone.html)
2. The waiting game. It can take a few hours to a few weeks for Google to re-index the correct links. It’s important that we wait until the new links are indexed before moving to the new server or our Wordpress installation.
3. Set up the custom domain and install Wordpress on your server. Remember, we are not changing DNS yet so people will still see the custom domain hosted at blogger until we are fully migrated to Wordpress and ready to pull the trigger. For working on this domain while it’s still on your server you’ll need to modify your hosts file. Once your hosts file has been modified to point your TLD to your server, and you’re closed and re-opened your browser, you’re ready to install Wordpress. Go ahead, install Wordpress on your domain.
4. Use the Wordpress migrate tool to import all your posts and comments. You can find the migration tool via Tools -> Import -> Blogger and then follow the provided instructions.
5. Permalink settings. You’ll want to change the Wordpress permalink settings to match the Blogger structure (can be changed later, but for now you’ll need to keep them) which is “/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html“.
Another roadblock is that blogger cuts off long URLs and also removes common words from it’s permalinks. Wordpress does not. That means that some of our old redirected links wouldn’t find their destination on the Wordpress version of our site as the links wouldn’t match. Have no fear, there’s a plugin that does the job of making Wordpress slugs match their blogger counterparts. Special thanks to Justin for this useful plugin –> Plugin to preserve blogger links when moving to Wordpress. Follow steps 1 – 6 on that page for instructions.
6. Set up redirects via .htaccess. You’ll need to redirect your old category pages to link to the new Wordpress category permalinks.
7. Links in your sidebar. Add any hardlinks you had on your blogger installation to the Wordpress blogroll as these weren’t migrated over.
8. Design. Find a custom Wordpress theme to install so you can have a nice design vs. the default Wordpress theme. Tons of options out there.
9. Revert hosts file. Change your hosts file back to normal, removing any entries you made for the custom domain.
10. Pull the trigger and change DNS. Once you’re links in search engines have been updates, thanks to the 301 we set up, we are now ready to make the big change. The last change is to point your DNS to your own server, away from Blogger. This may take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to take effect, but eventually when you access your site again, you’ll see your website on your host using Wordpress as it’s CMS.
11. Last step, redirects for links pointing to your old address. After changing DNS to your own server, the 301 that Blogger provides will cease to work. This means that any links pointing to your old blogspot address won’t redirect anymore. To fix this important issue, use a JavaScript redirect on your old blogger site to prevent breaking any links that still point to your old address. Justin has provided a JavaScript snippet that does exactly that. You can find that snippet for JavaScript to redirect from your old blogspot URLs here.
OK, it’s now officially an eleven step guide. 
Congratulation, you’ve just migrated from Blogger to your own server running Wordpress!
Justin Watt says:
August 31st, 2009 at 7:42 pm -
Nice guide. Folks should keep in mind that even though Google will eventually reindex their content that gets 301-redirected to a custom domain (after they play “The waiting game” in step two), once they “Pull the trigger and change DNS” in step ten to point to their new WordPress hosted blog, this will still break any links people have made to their old posts.
Yeah, I know, Google is king, but it’s the actual readers that I care about.
Thus I’d propose a bonus Step 11 for completeness: Use a JavaScript redirect (or meta refresh) to prevent breaking the links that still point to your old blogspot blog. I’ve added an example JavaScript snippet that does just this to my Maintain permalinks moving from Blogger to WordPress post referenced above.
And who knows, maybe one day Google will allow people to set up 301-redirects from their old Blogspot-hosted blog to external domains…
David - WidecastMarketing.com says:
September 1st, 2009 at 1:59 pm -
Good point, Justin. It slipped my mind that links pointed to the old domain would cease to redirect after DNS was switched away from the Blogger service. I’ve updated the guide to include a step 11, as you’re right, it’s important!
GoenduL.Net says:
November 13th, 2009 at 6:55 pm -
thanks for share these tips. Really helpful coz I still confuse using WP for my anothers blog
Voyagerfan5761 says:
November 16th, 2009 at 11:15 am -
Hopefully someday, Justin. I got a sort-of response from Rick Klau (Blogger’s project manager) himself to my move, but I haven’t heard back from him since that first reply.
Who knows, with this whole Blogger Birthday thing they’ve been doing, maybe redirecting your own blog (kthx) will be a new feature!
We can do nothing but wish and hope and think and pray.
Lorraine says:
December 23rd, 2009 at 9:16 am -
Hello,
This is the most comprehensive guide I’ve found on how to migrate from blogger to wordpress. I have a question. I’m running into trouble with steps three and four. I’ve installed wordpress using fantastico, but I can’t log into my admin, which I should be able to access at
http://www.spooksbyme.org/wp-admin/
However, when I try to log in, blogger just notes that the page can’t be found. I see all the correct wordpress files in file manager…
Do you have any thoughts on how to solve this problem and proceed forward?
Many thanks in advance.
Stephanie says:
January 6th, 2010 at 8:01 pm -
I’ve actually had my custom domain on Blogger for quite a while – so if I’m understanding correctly, I can switch to Wordpress at any time and from what you are saying above, I should not lose any Google juice. Existing blog links have all already been re-directed to the custom domain and changing the DNS will just point them to the Wordpress site. (Using the plug in to match URL’s) All existing links & backlinks will go to the WP site…
Would I then just leave the Blogger site up? (with the custom domain removed)
Much thanks in advance -
David - WidecastMarketing.com says:
January 20th, 2010 at 11:46 pm -
Hi Stephanie- Since your Wordpress version of the site has the exact same domain and URLs then I’d say that your Google rankings will most likely be seamlessly transferred.
About the Blogger version of your site, you may better off deleting it or adding a robots noindex/nofollow so that (even though I think it’s unlikely) Google doesn’t give you a duplicate content problem due to having two domains with the same content.
Good luck!
David
David - WidecastMarketing.com says:
January 20th, 2010 at 11:58 pm -
Hi Lorraine- The reason you are seeing a page not found for the Wordpress admin is because right now when you visit the site in your browser you are seeing the Blogger version. In order for you to access the Wordpress version, which you installed on your server, you need to add a line to your hosts file which resides on your computer. You’ll need to add a line like this:
70.26.55.80 example.com
Where the string of digits is your server address (your host can provide that value) and change example.com to your site’s URL, spooksbyme.org.
Then you, and only you, will be able to see the Wordpress version of your site so that you’d be able to continue with the rest of the steps in this guide.
I hope that helps,
David
Jonathan says:
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:42 am -
Thanks for the guide guys. I’m about to move from custom blogger domain to wordpress and am really worried and confused about the process.
The thing I don’t get is, there are scores of guides on the net about migrating, and all of them appear to be if not completely then at least slightly different.
Are there different ways of migrating then? Or is someone telling fibs? And if so, how do we know what is the best way to keep permalinks etc?
I’m really concerned I’ll lose ranking and permalinks etc in the process and want to be 100% sure how to go about this before I migrate.
Perhaps I’m being too paranoid?
David - WidecastMarketing.com says:
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:54 pm -
Hi Jonathan, I don’t think you’re being paranoid. There’s nothing scarier than the idea of losing all your search rankings due to a bad migration.
I can’t really comment on other guides but I can tell you that I’ve written this guide based on my own experience and had flawless results.
You ask about permalinks, if you use Justin’s plugin from step #5 you’ll be fine. It’s tried and tested.
Good luck!