We’ve talked about the benefits of owning your own blog, but what if you’ve already got a blog someplace else and want to move it to your own, hosted, WordPress blog? You can do that.
WordPress offers a number of easy import options for most major free or paid blogging platforms out there. This makes it easy to move away from other software to your own, hosted, WordPress blog.
WordPress currently offers the ability to import:
- Blogger
- Blogware
- DotClear
- GreyMatter
- LiveJournal
- Movable Type
- TypePad
- Textpattern
- WordPress
- OPML Files
- RSS Feeds
Each one of these options can be access by logging into your hosted WordPress blog and visiting the Tools -> Import section. From there, WordPress will give specific step-by-step instructions on what to do.
Additional blogging platforms can also be imported, but are not officially supported. This includes:
- b2
- b2evolution
- Blosxom
- Drupal
- e107 CMS
- Excel/CSV Spreadsheet
- Jogger.pl
- Live Space (MSN Space)
- Mambo
- Motime – Splinder
- Pivot
- Plone
- PostNuke
- Nucleus CMS
- Radio Userland
- Roller
- Typo
- web-log.nl
- Xanga
- Zoomblog
- [X]HTML
Information on how to import this content can be found at: http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_Content
When it comes to sites like MySpace or Facebook, importing the content can be trickier. You can try the RSS approach or see if the social network offers an export function, but you may end up having to copy and paste the content into your new site. Currently, social networks don’t make it easy to get out what you put in.
The down side to moving all your content to your own hosted blog is you’ll loose any inbound links, rankings in search engines, and any exposure those posts may have built up at the original location. However, in time, the benefits of owning, and controlling, your blog are much greater over time.
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About Lee Odden
can u list the bennies of moving from typepad besides reputation i am not sure my readers care if my posts are good.
I just recently updated my ultimate guide to migrating from Blogger to WordPress—there are actually ways to work redirects and keep link equity in place (woo hoo!). Check it out:
http://www.mamablogga.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-migrating-from-blogger-to-wordpress/
@Jordan Where as the meta refresh does work to redirect users, from an SEO standpoint, the link value doesn’t come along. But the visitors do which is very important. Thanks for the information.
@Jennifer I’m unsure of your question. bennies?
The zero meta refresh is only for the root domain; the individual pages are covered by the custom domain option (which is only a 302 redirect, but what can you do).
Also, according to the link in my post above, both Yahoo (http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/webcrawler/slurp-11.html) and Google (via Adam Lasnik) have confirmed that meta refreshes are taken as 301 redirects.
So from an SEO standpoint, I’m fairly certain it DOES transfer the link equity. I’ve worked in SEO since 2005. 😀
@Jordan Thanks for the feedback. I learned something new today. 🙂
I have been on blogger for almost and would love to move to WP as I now have my own domain name…but I am not in love with the idea of losing my rankings, etc. I know long term it’s worth the move but I’m also afraid to end up with a really screwy looking blog that needs lots of tweaking since it’s going to be in a whole new format.
I think it’s also worth considering your permalink structure. I’m not sure how this works moving from a different platform to wordpress, but I wrote a guide on how to move from a wordpress.com free account to a self-hosted wordpress.org site at my blog.