Steps To Migrate From Blogger To WordPress Without Losing Google Rankings ~ NICKYLINK ENTERTAINMENT

Hello, Welcome again and now, this time, I am here with another cool article which is requested by one of my site’s reader. As he said me to help him in migrating his website from blogger to WordPress, I think many other readers may also want to know that How To Migrate From Blogger To WordPress Without Losing Google Rankings.

So, I decided to write this article and here I am with this cool information. As we all know blogger is free and easy to use but there are so many limitations in blogger. I know for a beginner blogger is best to test his strength and he can get the idea about that is he/she is ready to handle a website? So blogger is best I also started from Blogger but believe me, if you want to keep full control over your blog then blogger is not for you. Yes, blogger is Google’s product and if you made a little mistake then you can lose your whole blog and hard work. Google can penalize or delete your blog anytime if you did anything wrong on your blog. On the WordPress can host your website and WordPress is more SEO friendly and there are no limitations in WordPress as comparing to Blogger.

WordPress has so many features and everyone can understand it. When we simply host our website on WP from the starting we don’t face any issue like 404 errors or any other. But when we move our site from Blogger to WordPress then we face these issues. Becuase the link structures changes and the old links stop working but in this post, I will show you how you can avoid these issues. So let’s move to the main point 😀

Step Before Migration

Before starting the migration you need a web hosting to install the WordPress and to host your website. But make sure the hosting you are buying is good and fast. You can use any WP hosting which you want to choose. But as you are here to know about this all I would like to suggest you to choose DreamHost hosting as they are number 1 and so many people using there service from a long time.

If you will buy the hosting with my link then you will get extra discount too. So why not you use DreamHost for your website.

Things To Keep In Mind

First, while migration don’t do any experiment so simply follow the steps.
Do not make changes in the cpanel and WordPress codes. Because a little change can ruin your whole website.
Your website will start showing 404 errors in webmasters because of changes in some links. But don’t be afraid it’s not a big deal.
You are the responsible if you did anything wrong while doing changes. So better is that follow the steps carefully.

Steps To Migrate From Blogger To WordPress Without Losing Google Rankings

So are you ready to migrate from blogger to WordPress? Yes, then follow the method and do it carefully. Follow these steps:-

Export Blogger For WordPress

The first step is that you have to go to your blogger dashboard and from their export your blogger’s content. To do that you need to go to Settings->Other and here you can see the Back Up Content option in the Import & back up area at the top. Click on it.

When you clicked on the backup button a popup will come and here you have to click on the save to your computer button.

After clicking on this button, an XML file will start downloading. This file contains your posts, pages, and other data. So now we will upload it on the WordPress.

Import From Blogger To WordPress

Now to upload the XML file into WordPress to get your content just click on the Tools->Import. Then click on the Blogger which is located on the top of the list.

When you clicked on the Blogger button a popup menu will come which will ask to install the Blogger to WordPress Importer plugin. Just Click on the install button and installation will be started. Just let the installation done and then click on the Activate Plugin & Run Importer button to continue.

The next screen will appear which will ask you for the file. Remember we download the XML file from Blogger? The same file you have to upload here, Just click on the choose file button and select the file to begin uploading.

WordPress will start importing the content from that file. Let the importing finish and when it finish it will ask you to assign the author for the posts. Now it depends on you that you choose existing author or create a new author.

Hurray! These are the steps to import the content from Blogger and uploading on WordPress. You can check your all articles but wait doesn’t you think you also need to change the permalinks to not to lose the ranking and current traffic? :p So this is the time to set the permalinks structure to continue getting old traffic.

Permalinks Setup

As you can see in Blogger there are month and date appears in the link. But in WordPress users can use the permalinks without month and date which becomes the SEO friendly URL structure. But as you are moving from blogger to WordPress you need the old URL structure. So users don’t face any type of error like page not found etc. To make these changes follow the below steps.

Setting permalinks is very easy, Just go to Settings->Permalinks and click on custom structure and paste the following code in the box. Save Changes

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

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

Now the permalink is set now time to set the redirection for the proper landing of the user to the same page for which he is looking.

Redirection Settings

Don’t feel tired because this is a very important step as redirection help the users to land on the same page for which they were trying to access. Yes, redirection is the way which helps us to tell the search engines that we have moved to new location. Also, users will start landing on the same page without any problem. So do this step also to avoid any type of issue.

We will here add two codes to redirect the users. First in the Blogger and then in WordPress, first to redirect the blogger users to WordPress and the second to redirect the users to the same post from which they redirected to WordPress from blogger.

Open Blogger Dashboard again and click on Template and in the end, you can see the Revert To Classic template option. Click on the first button to Revert To Classic template.

Now the step is that you have to click on the Edit Template Button and then delete the every word from here and paste the following code. Replace the yourdomain.com with your website domain.

<html>
 <head>
  <title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>

   <script>
    <mainorarchivepage>
    window.location.href="http://yourdomain.com/"
    </MainOrArchivePage>
    <blogger>
     <itempage>
     window.location.href="http://yourdomain.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"
     </ItemPage>
    </Blogger>
   </script>

   <mainpage>
   <link rel="canonical" href="http://yourdomain.com/" />
   </MainPage>

   <blogger>
    <itempage>
    <link rel="canonical" href="http://yourdomain.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" />
    </ItemPage>
   </Blogger>
 </head>

 <body>
  <mainorarchivepage>
   <h1>
<a href="http://yourdomain.com/"><$BlogTitle$></a></h1>
</MainOrArchivePage>
  <blogger>
   <itempage>
    <h1>
<a href="http://yourdomain.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"><$BlogItemTitle$></a></h1>
<$BlogItemBody$>
   </ItemPage>
  </Blogger>
 </body>
</html>

<html>

<head>

window.location.href="http://yourdomain.com/"

</MainOrArchivePage>

window.location.href="http://yourdomain.com/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"

</ItemPage>

</Blogger>

</script>

</MainPage>

</ItemPage>

</Blogger>

</head>

<body>

</MainOrArchivePage>

<$BlogItemBody$>

</ItemPage>

</Blogger>

</body>

</html>

Click on the Save Template to make the changes. Here you successfully added the redirection in blogger. Now it’s time for WordPress.

In the WordPress adding redirection is also easy. With the step by step guide, you can do it easily.

In the WordPress go to Appearance->Editor->Functions.php. Wait to load it and then, in the end, paste the code which is given below. Make sure you ar not touching any other code because if you did so then you can mess up everything. So paste this code only and then click on Update

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();
}

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();

}

So this was the redirection process to redirect the users. These codes are taken from WPBeginner and these codes create 301 redirection which is perfect for better SEO. So you don’t worry about the negative effect also the users will land on the same page 😉

Wait wait wait we are not done yet. One more step is left redirecting feeds, because if you have subscribers on the blogger feeds then they will not get any latest updates if you not done this step. So do it now.

Go to Settings->Other in blogger and here you can find the Post Feed Redirect URL option. Click on it and add your website feed. Which will be like http://www.yourdomain.com/feed/ replace the yourdomain.com with your domain name. Save Settings