How to Move Custom Domain Blogger Blog to WordPress (Updated)

Moving your custom domain Blogger blog to WordPress doesn’t have to mean losing your Google rankings or breaking your old links. Your domain can stay the same, and your content can move with you.

But there’s one mistake that beginners often make that can turn a smooth migration into a disaster: pointing your domain at WordPress too early. Do that before importing your content, and visitors could land on an empty site while your Blogger blog disappears.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to move your custom domain Blogger blog to WordPress, preserve your SEO, and keep your site online throughout the process.

📍Note: This guide is for Blogger blogs that use their own address, such as yourblog.com, instead of the free yourblog.blogspot.com. Keeping that domain is what makes the steps different. If your blog still runs on a blogspot.com address, see our guide on how to switch from Blogger to WordPress instead.

Most people reading this have already decided to leave Blogger. If you are still weighing it up, see our comparison of WordPress vs Blogger.

Here are the steps I will cover in this guide:

Step 1: Back Up Your Blogger Content

Start with a backup. The file Blogger gives you is also the file you will import into WordPress in Step 3.

Log in to Blogger, pick your blog, and click ‘Settings’ in the left menu. Scroll down to ‘Manage blog’, click ‘Back up content’, and then click ‘Download’.

The Download button now opens Google Takeout, Google’s tool for downloading your data, with Blogger already selected.

Click ‘Next step’, keep the default settings, and click ‘Create export’. Google emails you a download link within a few minutes for a small blog.

Unzip the file and open Takeout » Blogger » Blogs » your blog’s name. The file you need is feed.atom, which holds your posts, pages, and comments. Keep the whole archive somewhere safe, because the Albums folder inside it holds every image you ever uploaded to Blogger.

Note: Leave your Blogger blog exactly as it is for now. Your readers keep using it until your WordPress site is ready in Step 5.

Step 2: Set Up WordPress Hosting and Install WordPress

Next, your new site needs a home. This guide is for self-hosted WordPress.org, not WordPress.com. If you are not sure about the difference, see our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

In order to build a WordPress site, you’ll have to host it with a WordPress hosting provider. You can choose any WordPress hosting provider that you want, like Bluehost or Hostinger. Both are officially recommended WordPress hosting providers.

When the hosting signup form asks for a domain, choose the option to use a domain you already own. Then enter the address of your Blogger blog.

Install WordPress on a Temporary Address

Your domain still points to Blogger, which means you cannot open the new site at yourdomain.com yet. Most hosts give every new site a temporary address, something like yoursite.hostname.com, in the welcome email or hosting dashboard.

Run the one-click installer and log in through that temporary address. If you need help, see our guide on how to install WordPress.

This is what keeps your downtime at zero. You import everything and check every post here while Blogger keeps serving your readers, then switch the domain over in one move.

Step 3: Import Your Blogger Content into WordPress

WordPress has a built-in Blogger importer under Tools » Import, but it no longer works. Google changed the export format in July 2025, and a bug ticket has been open on WordPress Trac since November 2025 with no fix.

That is why I recommend the free BtW Importer plugin instead. It supports the latest Blogger export format, has no limit on the number of posts you can import, and brings over your posts, pages, categories, and images. It also preserves your old Blogger URLs and automatically redirects them to their new WordPress URLs.

With that said, it won’t migrate the comments you receive on your Blogger blog. If you want to import the comments as well, then you’ll have to install the Blogger Importer Extended plugin instead of BtW Importer. Its free version only moves 20 posts, and you need a paid license to import everything. Pick one plugin, because running both imports every post twice.

We’ll be using the BtW Importer plugin for this tutorial.

First, install and activate BtW Importer. If you need help, see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Then click the new ‘BtW Importer’ menu item and read the short notice at the top. Check the ‘I’ve read and understood the information above’ box.

Next, click ‘Choose your Blogger export file’, pick feed.atom, and click ‘Upload File’.

Once the upload finishes, click ‘Extract Data’. The plugin reads the file and counts your posts and pages.

You are now ready to import. Leave the batch size on ‘Recommended’ and click ‘Start’.

The ‘Advanced Options’ panel can keep the original Blogger author for each post. Its experimental option to convert posts into WordPress blocks is best left unchecked, because you can convert posts later in the editor.

The import took a few seconds on our test blog. A blog with hundreds of posts and images takes a few minutes, and the progress bar shows where it is.

When it finishes, open Posts » All Posts and check a few posts with images. Every post keeps its original publish date.

Note: If Takeout split your export into several .zip files, import each feed.atom one after another. The plugin never overwrites existing posts, which means importing the same file twice creates duplicates.

Step 4: Set Up Permalinks and Fix Mismatched URLs

Now that your content is in, let’s make sure the old links still work. Blogger post URLs look like yourdomain.com/2024/05/post-title.html, while WordPress uses yourdomain.com/post-title/. You’ll have to redirect that old URL to the correct post on your new site in WordPress.

BtW Importer handles this automatically. It saves the original Blogger URL for every imported post and page, then redirects visitors from those old URLs to their corresponding WordPress URLs using a 301 redirect. This also helps search engines transfer the SEO value of your old URLs to the new ones.

You can see the full list under BtW Importer » Redirect Log.

For this to work, keep WordPress’s default permalink setting. Go to Settings » Permalinks, select ‘Post name’, and click ‘Save Changes’.

Do not use a custom permalink structure that copies Blogger’s .html URLs. If the WordPress URL is identical to the old one, the plugin’s redirect points the page at itself and the post never loads.

WordPress also builds slugs from the full title while Blogger shortened them, and in our test /2015/09/sample-post-1-with-image.html became /sample-post-1-with-an-image/.

There’s one more type of old Blogger URL you need to handle. Blogger added ?m=1 to URLs when serving mobile versions of your pages, and Google may have indexed those URLs.

WordPress uses the m parameter for date-based queries. So when someone visits an old Blogger URL like yourdomain.com/post-title.html?m=1, WordPress may interpret it incorrectly and show a 404 error.

The following snippet removes the ?m=1 parameter and redirects visitors to the clean URL, helping your old Blogger links continue to work:

add_action( 'template_redirect', 'wpb_redirect_blogger_mobile_urls' );

function wpb_redirect_blogger_mobile_urls() {
	if ( ! isset( $_GET['m'] ) || ! in_array( $_GET['m'], array( '0', '1' ), true ) ) {
		return;
	}

	wp_safe_redirect( remove_query_arg( 'm' ), 301 );
	exit;
}

The easiest way to add the code snippet to WordPress is with the free WPCode plugin. Install the plugin and then go to the Code Snippets » + Add Snippet page.

Choose ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ and pick ‘PHP Snippet’. Then, paste the code, and switch it to ‘Active’. Our guide on adding custom code in WordPress has the details.

Some URLs will never have a match, such as Blogger’s label and search pages or a post you renamed.

To properly redirect those pages, install the free 404 to 301 plugin. It also logs every 404 error on your site, which is how you find the old URLs you missed. Then it lets you redirect each one in a few clicks.

Note: Right after activating it, go to 404 to 301 » Settings and turn off ‘Enable default 404 redirect’.

The plugin ships with this setting on. It sends every unknown URL to your homepage before BtW Importer gets a chance to redirect it. In our test, every old post URL went to the homepage until we switched it off.

Go to 404 to 301 » Redirects and click ‘Add redirect’. Enter the old Blogger path as the source URL and the new post as the target, then click ‘Create redirect’. Our guide on how to track 404 pages and redirect them in WordPress covers the plugin in detail.

Once your domain points to WordPress in Step 5, test a few old Blogger URLs in your browser, including one ending in ?m=1. Each should land on the matching post.

Step 5: Point Your Domain to WordPress (Update DNS)

Your content is in and the redirects are ready, which means it is time to point the domain at the new site.

DNS (Domain Name System) is the internet’s address book. Right now your domain’s entry sends visitors to Blogger, and you will change it to send them to your WordPress host.

The simplest way is to change your domain’s nameservers. Your host lists two or more of them in the welcome email or hosting dashboard, and they look like this:

ns1.yourhost.com
ns2.yourhost.com

Note: If you use this domain for email, such as Google Workspace, write down your MX records first. Add them again in your host’s DNS settings right after the switch. Otherwise your email stops arriving.

Where you make the change depends on your registrar, the company you bought the domain from. Below I cover the two that most Blogger owners use. For any other registrar, see our guide on how to change domain nameservers.

Updating Nameservers in Squarespace Domains

If you bought your domain through Blogger’s own ‘Buy a domain’ option, your registrar was Google Domains. Google sold that business to Squarespace, which took over every Google Domains customer by 2024. Your domain now lives in Squarespace Domains even if you never created a Squarespace account.

Go to account.squarespace.com/domains, sign in with the Google account you use for Blogger, and click your domain.

Click ‘DNS’, then ‘Domain Nameservers’, then ‘Use Custom Nameservers’. Squarespace asks for your password and may ask you to turn off DNSSEC. Click ‘Continue’.

Enter your host’s nameservers in the ‘Nameserver 1’ and ‘Nameserver 2’ fields and click ‘Save’.

Updating Nameservers in GoDaddy

If GoDaddy is your registrar, sign in, open your Domain Portfolio, and click the domain to open its ‘Domain Settings’ page.

Next, click on ‘DNS’ and then switch to the ‘Nameservers’ tab.

Then click ‘Change Nameservers’, enter the nameservers your host provided, and save.

Note: Registrar dashboards change their design often. If your screen looks different, look for ‘DNS’, ‘Nameservers’, or ‘Manage Nameservers’. The steps are the same.

Nameserver changes usually take effect within an hour but can take up to 48 hours everywhere.

Switching WordPress to Your Domain

Now, your WordPress installation still thinks it lives at the temporary address. Once your domain starts loading from the new host, tell WordPress its real address.

Many hosts have a ‘change domain’ or ‘assign domain’ tool in the dashboard. It does this in one click and sets up the free SSL certificate at the same time. For example, here is how Hostinger asks you to connect a domain name.

If your hosting provider does not offer a similar tool, then log in to WordPress and go to Settings » General.

From here, change both ‘WordPress Address (URL)’ and ‘Site Address (URL)’ to your domain, starting with https://. Click ‘Save Changes’ and log in again at the new address.

The images you imported still use the temporary address inside your posts.

Run a search-and-replace from the old address to your domain to fix them all at once. Our guide on how to find and replace text in your WordPress database shows how. If the change locks you out, our tutorial on changing your WordPress site URLs covers the fix.

Step 6: Remove the Custom Domain in Blogger

Wait until your domain loads the WordPress site for you. You can use a DNS propagation checker tool to see if it has started pointing to your host.

Next, log in to Blogger, open ‘Settings’, and click your custom domain under ‘Publishing’.

Click ‘Delete’ in the box that opens and confirm.

This only disconnects Blogger from your domain. Your posts stay in your Blogger account.

There is one side effect. As soon as you remove the custom domain, your old yourblog.blogspot.com address starts working again and shows every post you moved. That is a full duplicate of your new site on a Google-owned domain.

To prevent that, scroll to ‘Permissions’ on the same Settings page, click ‘Reader access’, select ‘Private to authors’, and click ‘Save’. Your Blogger blog stays in your account as a private backup that nobody else can read. I do not recommend deleting it.

Step 7: Set Up Feed Redirects

Your domain now loads WordPress, but readers subscribed to your Blogger RSS feed will stop receiving updates unless you redirect the old feed URLs to your new WordPress feed.

You already have everything you need for this. The 404 to 301 plugin from Step 4 can redirect the old feed addresses too.

Go to 404 to 301 » Redirects and click ‘Add redirect’. Add these four rules one at a time, choosing the match type shown, and click ‘Create redirect’ after each one:

• Source /atom.xml, match type Exact, target /feed/
• Source /rss.xml, match type Exact, target /feed/
• Source /feeds/posts, match type Prefix, target /feed/
• Source /feeds/comments, match type Prefix, target /comments/feed/

The two Prefix rules catch every variation Blogger used, such as /feeds/posts/default?alt=rss or /feeds/posts/summary. Your list should look like this when you are done:

To test it, open yourdomain.com/feeds/posts/default in your browser. It should redirect you to yourdomain.com/feed/.

Step 8: Verify the Move in Google Search Console

The question I hear most often from our readers is whether you need to tell Google about the move. You do not. The Change of Address tool is only for moving to a different domain.

Since your domain name stays the same, Google treats this as a hosting change and continues crawling your existing URLs. You don’t need to submit a change-of-address request. Google’s own guidance on changing your hosting says the same.

Four things are still worth doing in Google Search Console during the first week.

1. Re-verify your site. Blogger verified your blog with Search Console automatically through your Google account, and that link breaks once the blog leaves Blogger.

If you’re using a free SEO plugin like AIOSEO, verifying your site with Search Console is easy. In Search Console, go to Settings » Ownership verification, choose ‘HTML tag’, and copy the tag.

Then in WordPress, go to All in One SEO » General Settings and open the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab. Paste the tag into the ‘Miscellaneous Verification’ box and save. This box is in the free version.

2. Submit your sitemap. You’ll have to submit your new sitemap URL to Google Search Console. While WordPress comes with a sitemap by default, it’s recommended to create a custom sitemap with an SEO plugin. For example, here’s the sitemap URL that the AIOSEO plugin generates: yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Copy it and submit it to Google Search Console. Take a look at our guide on WordPress sitemaps for more details.

3. Check your top posts. Open the ‘Performance’ report, note your five most visited old URLs, and paste each one into the URL Inspection tool. Each should show a redirect to the new WordPress URL.

4. Watch the Pages report. For the first week, open ‘Pages’ under ‘Indexing’ every day or two and look at the ‘Not found (404)’ list. Any old Blogger URL there needs a redirect from Step 4.

Small ranking changes for a couple of weeks are normal after any hosting change.

Additional Resources for Your New WordPress Site

Your WordPress site will not look like your Blogger blog at first, and that is normal. Themes control the design in WordPress. Our handpicked guide on the best WordPress themes will help you find one close to your old layout.

Here are the guides I recommend reading next:

• Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide for Beginners – Set up the SEO settings in WordPress to ensure your site drives organic traffic.
• Essential WordPress Plugins – The handful of plugins every new WordPress site should have.
• How to Increase Your Blog Traffic – The strategies we use to grow our own audience.

I hope this article helped you move your custom domain Blogger blog to WordPress.

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