Google running one of the biggest blogging or publishing platform is apparently not very SEO friendly. In this post I am going to give you 3 Reasons To Migrate From Blogger To WordPress. I was recently on triberr checking out some of the questions and tribes, one thing got my attention. Almost majority of the tribes that had some action going on where on the Mommy/Parenting/Child/Food blogs. Taking a closer look at these only goes to show that almost 90% of these blogs where running on blogspot or blogger platform. These bloggers are doing some great work here. However, ask yourself this question if you are a blogger/blogspot blogger.
What is the percentage of Search traffic is your blog getting?
Blogger’s Blogspot Does Not Have Categories
There is no proper structure established on blogspot platform. Did you ever notice that you could not do this? May be if you have used other platforms. Lables don’t work very well with search engines so that does not do you any good. You are better off not adding any lables at all. While there are many bloggers and blogspot fans who would deny this, I stronly believe that its not a very good choice for someone who is looking to establish themselves online as a business.
Google Webmaster Guidelines
The guidelines that are listed on the Webmaster forum are very simple, just use robots.txt to prevent spiders from crawling search results pages that don’t add value for users. Why this is a problem, as I mentioned in the previous point labels are being blocked by robots.txt, some but not all blogspot blogs have major indexing problems.
Blogspot Indexing Problems
With labels being blocked by robots.txt, some but not all Blogspot blogs have major indexing problems. As an example, it doesn’t seem like Google passes any credit or link juice through the dropdown menus used on the blog. Dropdown menus on blogspot could cause indexing problems and even the traditional older posts / newer posts navigation ends up being blocked by the robots.txt file.
With all that said, one of the primary focus for you as a blogger is to get your posts index and ranked on search engines like Google. Getting traffic from search engines are a key to your success.
Its time that you decided on which platform you are going to use. Happy blogging.
About Eddie Gear
You can create categories in blogger – just check out my blog (top right on sidebar) and this is my post with the how-to: http://www.mariashandmadelove.com/2011/08/tips-and-tricks-how-to-add-categories.html . But I still believe I do need to make the change to WP…sigh. Dreading it! Thank you for sharing this, more food for thought!
Hi Maria, Thanks for your comments. I checked your post and let me explain this further.
http://www.mariashandmadelove.com/search/label/artists%20and%20artisans
if you look at the URL is has SEARCH in it. which means its a mere search url that is still referencing a label. As per my message you can will notice that they are both no follow. I hope that clarifies the post.
So in Blogger you can make “categories” for search within your blog but they do not get picked up by search engines…got it! Thank you for bursting my bubble! (joke)
I stand corrected! Thank you for responding to my comment and explaining it further!
Thank you for sharing with us about this topic 3 Reasons To Migrate From Blogger To WordPress. I thinks this is a good idea for those who doesn’t know yet. Thanks again.
elpidio, Thanks for the comments here. did you happen to download my free ebook and free theme?
WordPress is the most powerful blogging platform I ever used. Blogger may be good if we are running a hobby blog, but if we are running a professional blog then WordPress is a must have. With tons of free themes and plugins available, blogger can’t beat WordPress.
Rojish, thanks for stopping by. Good to hear that you are a fan of WordPress, its an awesome platform to be working on.
There are many reasons I found that I liked WordPress over Blogger. For one thing, I found that I could control the “look” of the site much easier with WordPress. But these features that you listed give me even more reasons to be happy with my choice. Thanks for sharing them!
Grady , thanks for stopping by. I’ve just tried to give reason in terms of SEO based on platform you choose to blog. WordPress, its an awesome platform to be working on.
Hi Eddie, Wow, is it just me or you you see incredible irony in Google’s blogging platform not being search friendly? Go figure.
Question for you: how much do your reasons relate to wordpress.com vs. wordpress.org?
Thanks for sharing your in-depth knowledge on this subject with us. I learned a lot from this article.
Carolyn, I guess its just the way Google is, Dont make any changes to the product you acquire to make it better. To answer your question, My post is very specific to WordPress.org, however that is also applicable to WordPress.com as they have very similar functionality other than administrative options.
I agree, Eddie, Google doesn’t seem to meddle in the business of its acquisitions. Sometimes that’s a good thing, (YouTube) and other times it’s bad (shuttering Aardvark).
I’m glad your advice related to wordpress.org sites. Thanks for your response.
Three solid points. The indexing issues of blogger was always a problem. That’s why I never created a blog there. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Ricardo for your comment.
I am still with blogger. I found the key advantage with blogspot is, we need not worry about paid hosting and its bandwidth..
I can host blog freely and get good traffic from it. :O
That is true but is also applicable to other blogs like tumblr or wordpress.com. thanks for your comments anas.
I have actually never tried Blogger. I have almost always been using WordPress.org and I didn’t even think WordPress.com was worth using until I met Bill Dorman
- but in the end, I always tell people to get their own domain and use wordpress (but that’s mostly because that’s what I’m familiar with)
Jens
Thats interesting Jens, almost all bloggers first start out or at least test out blogging on blogger then shift to WordPress. WordPress has dramatically transformed the way websites are built.
Hello Eddie
I use blogspot to try and learn about blogging back 2007. But I change to WordPress platform when I see the power of Wordpres as a blogging platform. Many theme to choose from and great plugins for any purpose.
The most important point that you need to note is that WordPress is SEO friendly unlilke blogger.
These are great reasons Eddie but can I add a few more?
You don’t own your content and I hate their commenting feature. I have more problems trying to leave comments on blogger blogs then any other platform. Also having a free blog does mean you don’t own your content so although I know this doesn’t have anything to do with the search engines, it’s extremely important in order to get noticed. I mean when you have more links coming to your site the search engines will pay attention but if people have problems leaving comments, they will just move on to the next blog. I know I will.
Adrienne, I agree with you on the commenting system, its the worst system that I’ve seen among blogs. Also note that you can have your very own self hosted blog on blogger.
Can you tel me how can i convert my blogger to wordpress! If i move to wordpress i lose my blog fans & all other works(Submitted to various blog directories, wesites…etc…)? Do you have any solution for this?
Henry, you are bound to lose backlinks unless otherwise you had a self hosted domain. That way then URL has no change. Else you are bound to lose out your backlinks. I noticed that you are blogging on the free blogger platform so you will lose out on backlinks if you shift to wordpress.
Thanks for giving us ideas to migrate from Blogger to WordPress. I will follow your advice. God bless.
I am glad that this post helped you Julius.