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The Goal: Your current blog at abc.blogspot.com is hosted on the Blogger platform but you now want to move this blog from Blogger to WordPress (self-hosted) with a personal domain name (say abc.com).

The Problem: WordPress.org provides an easy option to automatically import all your old blog posts and reader comments from Blogger into your new WordPress blog but there are still some bigger problems that are hard to ignore:

Some of your previous articles on the blogspot blog could be ranking very high in search engines for certain keywords but once you shift these articles to a new address, you might lose all that organic search traffic.
You cannot use a 301 redirect with Blogger to inform search engines that your site has permanently moved a new web address thus losing PageRank and other Google Juice.
Not just search bots, human beings who come to read your old articles via links from other sites won’t know about the new location of those articles unless you manually insert the new links in each and every blogspot article (impossible for large blogs).
When you switch blogging platforms, existing blog readers who are subscribed to your Blogger RSS Feed may be lost forever if they don’t manually update their RSS readers with your new WordPress feed address (and most won’t).
When you lose RSS subscribers and search engines rankings, the page views will drop and that will seriously impact your AdSense revenue in case you are running Google ads.

The Solution: Now that you are aware of the various issues associated with moving sites from Blogger to WordPress, the very good news is that there exists a simple solution to deal with all these problems in one go. Remember you have to choose best hosting services providers in order to migrate to wordpress.org.

You can quickly and safely migrate any blog from Blogger to WordPress without losing RSS Subscribers or human visitors and there’s also a way to pass all that Google Juice from the old blogspot.com address to your new WordPress blog.

How to Move a Blog from Blogger to WordPress

Important: Before you implement anything, it may be a good idea to run through these steps on a dummy blog first. Also, backup your Blogger blog including the XML template, posts and comments just to be the safe side.

Step 1: In case you haven’t done this already — register a new web domain, buy server space from some web hosting company* that offers PHP / MySQL hosting and and install WordPress software on your new domain.

*This site is hosted on Dreamhost.com but there are other good hosting options like GoDaddy, Blue Host, Media Temple and Knowhost — most services offer one-click WordPress installation so you don’t need the help of a geek.

Step 2: Go to your WordPress Admin Dashboard -> Tools -> Import and select the Blogger option. Authorize WordPress to access your Google Account and within minutes, all your old blog posts and comments will be available on the new WordPress site.

Step 3: Copy this file into your WordPress themes directory and then rename the file from blogger.php.txt to blogger.php. You may use either Putty with wget or Web FTP to access your WordPress themes directory located on the web server. For credentials and other details, check your cPanel.

Here are the contents of that file.

<?php

Template Name: blogger

global $wpdb;

$old_url = $_GET[‘q’];

if ($old_url != “”) {

$permalink = explode(“blogspot.com”, $old_url);

$q = “SELECT guid FROM $wpdb->posts LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta “.

“ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->postmeta.post_id) WHERE “.

“$wpdb->postmeta.meta_key=’blogger_permalink’ AND “.

“$wpdb->postmeta.meta_value=’$permalink[1]'”;

$new_url = $wpdb->get_var($q)? $wpdb->get_var($q) : “/”;

header (“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);

header(“Location: $new_url”);

}

Step 4. Open your WordPress dashboard and go to Pages -> Add New Page. Keep the title and URL of that page as blogger and select “blogger” from the Template drop-down. Save. There’s no need to add any content to this page.

Step 5. Open the template generator, type the full address of your new WordPress blog (including http:// and the trailing slash) and this tool will create a new classic template for your blogspot blog that will look something like this.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”>

<head>

<MainOrArchivePage>window.location.href=’http://labnol.org/'</MainOrArchivePage>

window.location.href=’http://labnol.org/blogger/?q=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>’

</ItemPage></Blogger>

</script>

</ItemPage></Blogger>

</head><body>

<p>This page has moved to a new address.</p>

<h1>

</ItemPage></Blogger>

</h1>

</div>

</body></html>

<!– replace labnol.org with your WordPress site URL —>

Step 6. Open your Blogger Dashboard -> Layout -> Edit HTML and choose “Revert to Classic Blog”. Copy-paste the template generated in Step 5 in the “Edit Template” area and click “Save Template Changes”.

Your are done. Open any page on your old Blogger blog and it should redirect you to the corresponding WordPress page. On the WordPress side, since we are using a permanent 301 redirect with the redirection URLs, all the Google Juice will probably pass to your new WordPress pages with time.

Update your RSS Feed: When you move from Blogger to WordPress, the address of your RSS feed will change as well. Go to Blogger -> Settings -> Site Feed, type the address of your new WordPress RSS feed here and Google Reader, Bloglines, etc. will automatically move to your new feed. Check this FeedBurner FAQ for some more ideas.

Video Tutorial — Move from Blogspot to WordPress

Now that your new WordPress site is up and running with all the old Blogger posts, here are a few important things you should do:

Add your new WordPress site to Google Webmaster, verify ownership and and submit a Sitemap listing the URLs on your new site.
When you migrate from Blogger to WordPress, all your pictures and screenshot images hosted on Blogger / Picasa Web Albums will not get imported into WordPress. Therefore never delete your old blogger blog as it will break images that are now embedded in your WordPress posts.
Once the search bots and human beings start flocking to your new site, you may update the homepage of your blogspot blog with links to some of your best posts.
To know how Googlebot will view your existing Blogspot blog, just turn off JavaScript in the browser and try visiting any of your old blog pages. It’s a single link under H1 that points to your new address that internally does a 301 redirect

You think blogging could be a great idea? Could making a WordPress Blog make you money? What are you looking to achieve from blogging? Who are you aiming at? Why do you want to share your words with the wider public?

These are all vital questions you need to answer before you commence your blog. However, below are our top tips to creating an effective and successful blog whatever your motivation is!

FIND YOUR SUBJECT MATTER

The first thing you need to determine is what you want to say and, more importantly how you are going to say it. Say something original… or at least say it differently! If you can put a fresh spin on a subject, whether informing, educating, entertaining or all three, your writing will be compelling to read.

FIND YOUR PLATFORM

Choose a platform that can offer a vast array of themes and feature-rich packages, such as solostream.com. This will give your blog a real professional shine. They also provide themes that are fully compatible with mobile browsing. Many people choose to read blogs out of home. Whether they are commuting to and from work or stopping for a coffee, your reader should be able to access your blog across all mobile devices.

FIND YOUR VOICE

The internet is not short of bland and passively written blogs so don’t add to the list! You have an opportunity to bring your voice to life so allow your personality and passion to shine through all your posts. The best blogs can make people laugh or cry because the reader is rooting for the blogger. Many of us like to live vicariously through the exploits of others so take your reader with you on your journey and keep them coming back for more!

FIND YOUR AUDIENCE

This is not so easy to do. How do you make sure you are not going to be sat in an empty room talking to yourself?! Well the good news is that a site like solostream will ensure your blog is SEO ready (fully optimized for search engines and able to generate the highest traffic). This will allow you to focus on writing a blog people will want to read.

GRAB ATTENTION

In journalism the role of a headline writer is a very specialist function. It really doesn’t matter how well written a piece is if the headline does not hook the reader in. If you are going to email your blog to your own distribution list, make sure you make a splash with your subject line or you will never hook them in!

KEEP THE READER ON YOUR PAGE

Now you have found your readers and brought them to your blog you want them to stay and read your post in full. Make sure you do not waste words. Never post a first draft you have written. Edit your post so it says what you need it to say – no more, no less. You want every sentence to have some impact or resonance with the audience. Don’t ramble on aimlessly or your reader will quickly drift away!

ENGAGE WITH YOUR READERS

It can have enormous benefits for the blogger if they make themselves accessible to the readership. Invite comments on your posts. Always be polite and respectful and take the opportunity to add that extra personal touch! This will enable you to build audience loyalty.

MAXIMIZING OPPORTUNITIES

The internet is a bountiful, never-ending landscape of opportunities. For bloggers these take the shape of sponsorship and affiliate marketing. If your content is drawing in an audience from a particular demographic, let’s say, 25-34 year olds with a keen interest in health and fitness; that will allow you to form affiliate marketing connections with product suppliers who will appeal to those readers.

As a blogger you can earn money from purchases made that have originated as a click through from your blog. Other businesses, able to see the traffic you generate, may approach you with offers to provide banner sponsorship of your blog pages. Solostream has a world class support team who can advise you on this.

TIMING

You should not under-estimate the importance of timing. You want your blogs to always be relevant and ‘of the moment’. If you are writing about the best places to visit in the UK, it is better to do this before the peak season rather than just after! If you write on sport then those that preview major events or events in progress, will have much more appeal than post-event pieces.

LOVE WHAT YOU DO

The question posed at the start was, “what is your motivation?” However you answer this it has to include ‘for pleasure’. It is key that you enjoy writing your blog and get satisfaction from the process. It should never feel like a chore and should always resonate as completely authentic.