7 Steps to successful migration from Blogger to WordPress

Back to some basics today. For some time now, I haven’t written about blogger(blogspot.com) even though I get emails once in a while asking about things like migrating from blogger to wordpress and the like. In fact, there’s been repetitive questions on Blogger to Wordpress migration. So here are some of my thoughts, ideas for Blogger to WordPress migration you’ll find useful.

Ensuring a smooth migration from Blogger to WordPress

Before the migration

1. Getting the domain name.

I assume you’ve bought a great domain name.
Make sure that,
a. If you have a site that needs promotion ( above the natural organic search )
- Get a “brandable” domain name with good recall value.
b. If you have a site that has a natural pulling through organic search through your content,
- Then get a domain name that matches with your niche.

Ensuring a smooth migration.

2. Don’t delete the old blog, build the new one first.

I assume that you already have some traction with the traffic on the blogger account. Now the most important step to take before moving to the WP account is to make sure that you don’t lose your traffic.

For this, before deleting your blogger.com account, set up your WordPress blog on the new domain, and import all the blogger post using the import function. Find more information about importing here.

3. Get the new blog indexed on Google.

Now, make sure that you get the new blog indexed through a valid external link. During this time, I’d advice that you block all the google indexing to the inner pages/articles either using noindex tags or password protecting those pages. And only let the main domain name be indexed. The reason is that if you let the content get indexed now, it may result in duplicate content.

4. Issue a 301 redirect on the old domain.

Once the new blog gets indexed on Google, install a 301 redirect on all the pages/main domain of your old blogger.com account. This will make sure that all the old posts will be “deleted” from Google and replaced with the new blog. I’d also advice that you create URL structures on the new domain to match the old one and therefore make redirecting easier and less complicated. Also make sure that you’ve lifted the “noindexed” tags and “unblocked” all the inner pages/articles from the new domain. More information on 301 redirects from blogger can be found here, here , here and here.

5. Watch the traffic closely for a few days, see for fluctuations.

For every migration, things take their own time, although if we have done things right, we should be able to expect a quick change over. So watch the traffic to the new blog carefully and see if you’re getting the same traffic as much as the old blog. If not, don’t worry, there might be some temporary glitches so hang on, you need to worry only if things don’t get right in a week or so.

6. If the traffic is okay, drop the old blog.

If you’re getting half as traffic as the old blog, things are fine. So its safe to drop the old blog. But wait, hang on for some more days until you get the traffic steady.

7. Check the SERPS.

If the SERPs still show the old blog URL, please contact Google Webmasters and request a manual deletion. But if you’ve done things right, it should already have replaced by the new one.

That pretty much summarizes it, but make sure you don’t skip any step in between or things can screw up. One grave mistake I’ve found many people repeating is that they delete the old blog even before the new one is indexed on Google. They import the contents on to the new blog and just delete the old blog thinking that things will get automatically fixed from there. Actually in all chances, there may not be screw ups, but you might as well see a major dip in traffic so much as to zero while the new site is being indexed. So, do it slow and steady, things will be alright.

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