How to Migrate from Blogger to WordPress

Blogger has been a comfortable home for a lot of writers and small businesses since Google launched it, but its limits show up fast once you get serious. You cannot install plugins, you cannot fully control your theme's code, ecommerce is off the table, and Google can shut down or de-prioritize the platform on its own timeline. WordPress is the opposite: self-hosted, endlessly extensible, and the CMS behind roughly 40% of the web. Migrating from Blogger to WordPress gives you ownership of your content, your URLs, and your data.

The good news is that Blogger-to-WordPress is one of the cleaner migrations you can do, because WordPress ships with a native Blogger importer and Google provides a full XML export of your blog. The risk is not losing your posts, it is losing your search rankings and backlinks if your URLs change and you skip redirects. This guide walks through exactly what moves, what breaks, and how to make the switch without tanking traffic.

Below is a practical, order-of-operations playbook you can follow whether you are moving a 30-post hobby blog or a 2,000-post business site that ranks for real money keywords.

Why businesses move from Blogger to WordPress

Blogger is free and reliable, but it is a walled garden. The reasons companies outgrow it are consistent:

• No plugins or apps. You cannot add Yoast or Rank Math for SEO, WooCommerce for a store, contact forms, membership gating, or booking systems. WordPress has tens of thousands of plugins for exactly these jobs.
• Limited design control. Blogger themes are constrained. WordPress lets you use any theme, page builder, or fully custom-coded design you want.
• You do not own the platform. Blogger is a Google product with no service guarantee. If Google sunsets it (as it has done with Reader, Google+, and other properties), your site is at risk.
• Weak commercial features. No native ecommerce, no CRM, no lead capture. On WordPress you can bolt on a store or a custom CRM and business logic without changing platforms again.
• Data portability. WordPress content lives in a database you control and can export at any time, so you are never locked in the way Blogger locks you in.

What changes and what breaks in the move

Understanding what carries over cleanly versus what you have to rebuild saves you from nasty surprises on launch day.

• Content (transfers well): Posts, pages, publish dates, authors, and most inline images import through the native tools. Post text and formatting survive intact in almost all cases.
• URLs (this is the big one): Blogger uses a rigid structure like /2024/03/post-title.html. WordPress defaults to /post-title/ or /2024/03/post-title/. The .html extension and the exact path almost never match, so every old URL needs a redirect or you will 404 your ranked pages.
• Design (rebuild): Your Blogger theme does not come with you. You choose a new WordPress theme and recreate the look. Treat this as an opportunity, not a loss.
• Widgets, gadgets, and Blogger comments: Blogger gadgets do not exist in WordPress. Native Blogger comments migrate, but if you used Google+ comments or Disqus you will need to re-import or reconnect them.
• Images: The importer pulls in images, but many stay hosted on Google's servers (blogspot/googleusercontent). You should re-import them into your WordPress media library so you are not dependent on Google URLs that can break.
• Feeds and subscribers: Your RSS/Atom feed URL changes. Redirect the old feed and point any email tools (Feedburner, etc.) at the new one.

Step 1: Set up WordPress hosting and export your content

First, stand up the destination. Choose a host (SiteGround, Cloudways, WP Engine, Kinsta, or a managed provider), install WordPress, and set your permalink structure under Settings > Permalinks before you import anything. Choosing the right permalink pattern up front makes redirect mapping far simpler later.

Then export from Blogger. In the Blogger dashboard go to Settings > Manage blog > Back up content, which downloads a single .xml file containing every post, page, and comment. Keep this file safe. This is your complete content archive and the source for the import.

Step 2: Import posts, pages, and images into WordPress

WordPress has a built-in importer designed for exactly this. In wp-admin go to Tools > Import, find Blogger in the list, and install the Blogger Importer plugin. Upload the XML file you exported and run it. On large blogs you may need to run it more than once or increase your PHP memory and upload limits.

• After importing, assign authors so posts map to the correct WordPress user accounts.
• Use a plugin like Auto Upload Images or Import External Images to pull image files off Google's servers into your own media library, then confirm no images still reference blogspot or googleusercontent URLs.
• Spot-check formatting, embedded videos, internal links, and category/label mapping. Blogger "labels" become WordPress categories or tags depending on the importer.
• Rebuild anything the importer cannot handle: your navigation menu, sidebar, contact forms, and any custom pages.

Step 3: Map and implement 301 redirects (protect your SEO)

This is the step that determines whether you keep your traffic. Blogger URLs and WordPress URLs almost never match, so you must tell search engines and visitors where each old page now lives using 301 (permanent) redirects, which pass the large majority of link equity to the new URL.

There is a well-known shortcut for this migration. Install the free Blogger to WordPress Redirection plugin (from Rank Math / MyThemeShop). It generates the redirect code you paste back into your old Blogger template, so that anyone hitting an old .html URL is 301'd to the matching new WordPress post automatically. For any URLs that do not map one-to-one, build a manual redirect table using a plugin like Redirection or handle it at the server level. Our guide to building a 301 redirect map shows how to inventory every old URL and match it to its new destination so nothing slips through.

• Export your full list of live Blogger URLs from Google Search Console and your sitemap before you switch DNS.
• Match each old URL to its new WordPress URL in a spreadsheet.
• Redirect the old RSS/Atom feed and any category/label archive URLs, not just posts.
• Preserve your most-linked and highest-traffic pages first, since those carry the most SEO value.

Because SEO is the highest-stakes part of any CMS move, walk through a full website migration SEO checklist before and after launch so redirects, canonicals, titles, and sitemaps are all verified.

Step 4: Point your domain, launch, and test everything

If you used a custom domain on Blogger, the switchover happens at your DNS. Update your domain's A records and CNAME to point at your new WordPress host instead of Google. If you were on a free .blogspot.com subdomain, buy a real domain now and set the Blogger redirect so the old blogspot address forwards to it. Allow up to 24-48 hours for DNS to fully propagate.

Once live, run a thorough QA pass:

• Spot-check dozens of old URLs to confirm they 301 to the right new page (use a redirect checker or crawl with Screaming Frog).
• Submit a fresh XML sitemap in Google Search Console and, if the domain changed, use the Change of Address tool.
• Install and configure an SEO plugin (Yoast or Rank Math) and confirm titles, meta descriptions, and canonical tags carried over.
• Re-add analytics (GA4), verify images load from your own server, and test the site on mobile.
• Watch Search Console coverage and rankings for a few weeks; a small temporary dip is normal, a sustained drop usually means a redirect gap.

Timeline, cost, and when to get help

A straightforward personal blog with a couple hundred posts can be migrated in a day or two if you are comfortable with hosting, DNS, and permalinks. A business site with thousands of posts, custom design requirements, a store, or complex redirect mapping is realistically a one-to-three-week project once you factor in a new theme build, image re-hosting, testing, and monitoring.

On cost, the DIY route is mostly your time plus hosting (roughly $10-$40/month) and an optional premium theme. If you want it done professionally, agency work is billed by scope and hours; at eSEOspace our rate is $80/hour, and a typical Blogger-to-WordPress migration lands in a predictable range depending on post count and design ambition. If your blog drives leads or revenue, the redirect and SEO work is where professional help pays for itself, because a botched migration can erase years of ranking equity in a weekend.

If you would rather not risk it, our website migration services handle the export, import, redirect mapping, and post-launch monitoring end to end, and our WordPress development team can rebuild your design to be faster and better-ranking than your old Blogger theme in the process.