How to switch from Blogger to WordPress

[UPDATED: MAY 2022]

With many web design platforms available nowadays, many people who are interested in starting a blog select a free tool l like Blogger. But soon enough, they realized the limitation of Blogger, and decide to move their website to self-hosted WordPress with its endless possibilities. In the step by step tutorial below, I will help you switch from Blogger to WordPress and keep your Google ranking.

First of all, Blogger has been my platform of choice for many years and its simple and secure nature allowed me to start out my journey into blogging with ease. But, just like with everything else that is good, there comes a time when it’s just not enough anymore. And that is when I have done some research on most of the popular website design platforms, the difference between Blogger and WordPress and settled for WordPress hosted on GoDaddy in the end. It’s important to note that I have successfully move my blog from Blogger to WordPress so the instructions below should bring the same results for you.

How to switch from Blogger to WordPress

Below you’ll find all the step-by-step tutorial to switch from Blogger to WordPress:

Step 1: Get web hosting & setup WordPress

To get started with WordPress, the first thing you would need is a good WordPress hosting company and your own domain name. I highly recommend GoDaddy because it comes with free domain and $1/per month WordPress hosting package.

Once you’ve signed up for WordPress hosting and set up your domain name, the next step is to install WordPress on your hosting account.

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

Step 2: Export Blogger Content

First thing you need to do is export your blogger blog’s content. Just log into your blogger dashboard and go to Settings » Other page. Under the ‘Import & back up’ section, you need to ‘Back up Content’ button.

This will bring up a popup where you need to click on the ‘Save to your computer’ button.

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 it into your WordPress site.

Step 3: Import Blogger to WordPress

To start importing your Blogger site into WordPress, you need to go to your WordPress admin and visit Tools » Import. On the Import page, click on Install Now under Blogger.

WordPress will now download and install the Blogger Importer plugin for you. Once it is finished installing, you would need to click on the Run Importer link to continue.

On the Import Blogger screen, WordPress will ask you to upload the XML file. This is the file that you downloaded in Step 2.

Simply click on the choose file button and upload the XML file you downloaded earlier. Next, click on the Upload file and import button to continue.

Now if you didn’t select my recommended hosts or your site is really large, you may get an error that your file size is too large. In this case, you would need to increase your maximum file upload limit. If your file is small, then you won’t see any errors.

WordPress will now import your blogger posts one by one. When it is finished, you will be asked to assign an author to the imported posts. You can assign your blogger posts to an existing author (you) or create a new author account.

Congratulations! You have successfully imported your Blogger content into WordPress. However, you still need to make sure that you don’t loose any search rankings and that visitors from your old blog easily land to the same content on your new WordPress website.

Step 4: Setting up Perma links

Step 5: Setting up redirection

The most important step in moving any website is to set up proper redirection so that users are redirected to your new website.

The important part of redirection is that you want users to land on exactly the same page on the new site which they were trying to access on the old site. Secondly, this also notifies search engines that your old site is moved to a new location.

To successfully move from Blogger to WordPress, you need to set up redirection on two levels.

First, you will redirect Blogger visitors to your new WordPress blog. Second, once users reach your WordPress site, you will redirect them to the exact post they were trying to read.

Let’s first set up redirection on the blogger blog. You need to log on to your Blogger account and go to your Blog’s settings and click on Template.

On the template page, you need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Revert to Classic Template link.

After switching to classic template, you will see ‘Edit Template HTML’ text area.

You need to replace everything in this text area with the following code (replace http://example.com with your own domain name).

<html>
 
 <head>
 
  <title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>
 
 
 
   <script>
 
    <MainOrArchivePage>
 
    window.location.href="http://example.com/"
 
    </MainOrArchivePage>
 
    <Blogger>
 
     <ItemPage>
 
     window.location.href="http://example.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"
 
     </ItemPage>
 
    </Blogger>
 
   </script>
 
 
 
   <MainPage>
 
   <link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/" />
 
   </MainPage>
 
 
 
   <Blogger>
 
    <ItemPage>
 
    <link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" />
 
    </ItemPage>
 
   </Blogger>
 
 </head>
 
 
 
 <body>
 
  <MainOrArchivePage>
 
   <h1><a href="http://example.com/"><$BlogTitle$></a></h1>
 
  </MainOrArchivePage>
 
  <Blogger>
 
   <ItemPage>
 
    <h1><a href="http://example.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"><$BlogItemTitle$></a></h1>
 
    <$BlogItemBody$>
 
   </ItemPage>
 
  </Blogger>
 
 </body>
 
</html>
 

Save your template, and you have successfully implemented redirection on your Blogger blog.

However, you still need to setup redirection on your WordPress site so that users are redirected to the proper posts.

You need to copy and paste the following code in your WordPress theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin.

function blogger_query_vars_filter( $vars ) {
 
  $vars[] = "blogger";
 
  return $vars;
 
}
 
 
 
add_filter('query_vars', 'blogger_query_vars_filter');
 
 
 
function blogger_template_redirect() {
 
  global $wp_query;
 
  $blogger = $wp_query->query_vars['blogger'];
 
  if ( isset ( $blogger ) ) {
 
    wp_redirect( get_wordpress_url ( $blogger ) , 301 );
 
    exit;
 
  }
 
}
 
 
 
add_action( 'template_redirect', 'blogger_template_redirect' );
 
 
 
function get_wordpress_url($blogger) {
 
  if ( preg_match('@^(?:https?://)?([^/]+)(.*)@i', $blogger, $url_parts) ) {
 
    $query = new WP_Query ( 
 
      array ( "meta_key" => "blogger_permalink", "meta_value" => $url_parts[2] ) );
 
    if ($query->have_posts()) { 
 
      $query->the_post();
 
      $url = get_permalink(); 
 
    } 
 
    wp_reset_postdata(); 
 
  } 
 
  return $url ? $url : home_url();
 
}

The code above creates a blogger to WordPress 301 redirect which is what you need to ensure best SEO.

Once you have pasted this code, that’s all you need to do for setting up redirection.

Now anyone visiting a post on your old Blogger blog will be redirected to the same post on your new WordPress site.

Step 6: Redirect Your Feeds

Your RSS subscribers on the old Blogger site will not be able to notice the switch. That’s why you will need to redirect your Blogger feed to your new WordPress site’s feed.

You can do this by logging in to your Blogger account and then visit Settings » Other page under your blog dashboard.

Under the Site Feed section, click on Add link next to Post Feed Redirect URL. Here you can enter your new WordPress site’s feed address.

Usually it is http://example.com/feed/ (don’t forget to replace example.com with your own domain name).

Step 7: Import Images from Blogger to WordPress

When you are transferring blogger to WordPress, the WordPress importer will download images from your blogger posts into the WordPress media library. However, it can fail to download some images. This doesn’t happen often, but it can happen.

But there’s nothing to worry about because you can find and import these images into WordPress manually.

This will import all images from your blogger into your WordPress Media Library. Once the images are in your WordPress media library, you can easily create image galleries and more.

At this point, you have successfully switched from Blogger to WordPress without losing Google rankings. I hope this easy step by step tutorial was helpful, and you can explore all that WordPress has to offer.

And should you want to learn more about web design with WordPress, download my DIY Website Roadmap for WordPress, where I go in detail on how to plan, create & promote your new website with WordPress. Simply add your name and email below:

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in September 2018 and has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.In addition, I believe in transparency. If you use my referral links above, then I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you.