Moving Blogger Over to Wordpress: The Good, Bad and the Ugly
So far so good Blokesters. The move over to Wordpress has been pleasant for the most part but not without it’s nuisances either.
Probably the hardest part for me was deciding on what type of theme that I wanted. But once I made the decision there was no holding me back.
Admittedly there’s been a fair amount of work involved with learning my way around the Wordpress dashboard, tweaking and debugging the new theme, choosing which plugins to use and deciding on colour schemes etc. But that goes for anything new, and so far there’s been no major issues.
The Good:
- Moving from Blogger to Wordpress was relatively painless. I first imported it over to my Wordpress.com account. Then I exported it as an XML file to my desktop, which I imported back into this blog account. It took me about only 15 minutes to accomplish.
- I can’t believe how fast Google has indexed this blog. I’m already getting search engine referrals. Amazing! Wordpress really is SEO friendly.
- Working in Wordpress is a pleasure. The flexibility and ease of use is a powerful combination. The dashboard is clean, without all the annoying graphics that Blogger has… thus making it less cluttered and easier to use.
- I can now edit comments. I now have trackbacks without having to add third party software. I can add thumbnails to my post excerpts. I can publish my posts at a future date and time. Categories and tags are a breeze and more powerful… and much more.
- Wordpress is indeed POWERFUL! With the help of PHP it can become a dynamic content management system.
- Because it is relatively new New Blogger doesn’t feel as matured as Wordpress does. Wordpress is also free from all of the bugs and encumbrances that New Blogger is riddled with.
- Working in the Blogger editor interface was full of quirks that don’t seem to be an issue in Wordpress. Things like making bullets, blockquotes etc. required a lot of finessing in Blogger. Whereas Wordpress seems to work perfectly. I should also mention that the Wordpress built-in post editor is so much more powerful.
- I love the fact that I can just upload a plugin to do automatically what used to take me a lot of effort in Blogger. Things like for example making ”Related Posts“. Searching my blog for relevant posts, copying and pasting the links are now done automatically with Wordpress. What a time saver.
- No more trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear — Wordpress makes things like smart permalinks so easy, as compared to Blogger which required lines and lines of code to hack. In fact, to make Blogger more like Wordpress the entire code had to be hacked either by HTML tricks or javascript, which ended up slowing down the loading of the page and corrupting it’s xhtml compliance. Overall, everything just seems to work better in Wordpress.
- I am now truly the master of my blogging destiny with my own top domain and Wordpress on my own server. No more limitations and no more Google/Blogger shoving its paranoid agenda down my throat.
- And of course last but not least: The prime motivation for me leaving Blogger — comments are now on my post page. No more annoying multiple clicking just to leave a comment. BONUS!
The Bad:
- Because my new blog host hijacked the DNS I can’t just redirect my old Blogger blog to the custom URL. Accordingly all of my internal links are still pointing to the old blog. So if I want to change it I will have to go through every one of my old posts and manually correct the links. That’s just too much work as far as I’m concerned and so I will probably just live with it (at least for now … anybody up to making a plugin).
- I think I may have a solution though and I wish I had thought of it earlier. Next time around, before handing over my custom URL to the blog host I would redirect the old Blogger blog to the new custom URL while It was still hosted on Blogger. Then I would import into Wordpress.com like I did before and export it again to my desktop as an XML file.
- Theoretically at this point I should have all of the blog internal links pointing to the new custom URL. Then it would just be a matter of attaching the URL to the new blog host and importing the XML file, and poof … all of the internal links should work correctly.
- Hindsight certainly is 20/20. That’s also assuming of course that Wordpress will handle Blogger’s linkage as expected (or should I say hope). It may be worth a try and if it’s successful it will save a lot of unnecessary work. I’m wondering if anyone else has tried this technique? Or I may just try it myself on a test blog. Something else to play with.
- Also, during the import stage my more popular posts that have tons of comments were truncated at around the 50 comment mark. So I will have to manually add them later.
- So far the only thing that I’ve really missed from Blogger is the ease to add widget page elements, but there are also plugins that you can get for Wordpress that will do the same thing.
The Ugly:
- I’ve lost my backlinks. The only way I can fix it is if everyone who has ever linked to me will make the correction. Hint
Of course there are techniques that I can use to mitigate some of the more adverse affects of moving such as pagerank, but I will discuss that in another post.
No regrets. No solution is perfect but the benefits of moving over to Wordpress far outweigh the bad.
What are your experiences with moving over to Wordpress? Or perhaps you have a valid excuse reason(s) that’s holding you back from making the move! Let me know.
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Backlinks vanished into the Black Hole of Google???
Google Present Ration (PR) falling???
Perhaps, these minor issues will be solved soon by the benefits of using WordPress?
For reasons unknown, my RSS subscriptions have doubled since moving to WordPress which could be a clue as to how insignificant Google’s rating or ranking systems may be?
Is it possible to strike out the word NOT in the “7 Reasons Why Blogger Users Should NOT Switch to WordPress?
Might be better to keep adding to the list of 8 great reasons for sailing to WordPress listed in my post and comments at New England Lighthouse Blog has Sailed to the New World of WordPress!
Other than a few initial bumps like using Firefox NOT Safari, searching for the needle in the Header Code to hide the link in the Header image, and the Permalink issue, I found the WordPress Dashboard very easy to learn and use compared to Blogger.
Happy New Year,
Debbie Dolphin
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Hey, Bloke! Looking good! As you know, I’ve hit some stumbling blocks during my move to WordPress, but it has grown on me and I’m so pleased I moved.
I still have a lot of questions for which I’m not finding answers. And some of them are simple ones. Kinda frustrating. Anyway, glad to see you up and running. I’ve updated my feed.
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I too am working on a Wordpress project but I am getting frustrated working with the php tags and tryng to figure out how to get the sidebar show different content for the home page and the archive page !
Do you guys have any resources or websites that you can point me to ?
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Since I’m fairly new to blogging, my move to WordPress was probably a lot less painful than your move. I’m learning about different plug-ins and making changes and additions as I go along.
The biggest issue for me was finding a theme that allowed me to make changes to the header image. I wanted to be able to showcase some of my photography in a way that contributed to my blog. The theme I’ve chose not only does that, but it also allows me to use multiple images which are randomly cycled each time the page is refreshed. I’m thrilled with the results of installing the chosen theme.
Anyway, today I also added a Blokester button to my sidebar with a link back here. So, even though I wasn’t one of those with a previous link-back, there’s one for you now. :0)
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I found a wonderful article about displaying different sidebar-contents on different pages:
http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/06/21/bring-life-to-your-blog-using-conditional-tags/
Lee, you can always manually edit the theme files in wp-content/themes.
To change the header image, all you have to do is edit the header.php file !
If you server allows changing file permissions (to 666), you can even edit your theme within the word press environment
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Hi Debbie. Nice Avatar!
The reason you are getting more RSS subscriptions is probably because you moved to Wordpress. When you’re on WP you are somehow taken more seriously.
Heh, the “7 Reasons Why Blogger Users Should NOT Switch to Wordpress” is kind of embarrassing but I have no control over that. It’s a plugin that automatically inserts it. Then again, maybe it’s good to read the flip side of the argument as well.
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Thanks for updating the feed Kathy. I would miss you tremendously over here. By the way, have you noticed that you are already number 6 on the all-time Top Commenters list? Congratulations!
We’re all learning as we go with Wordpress. But as a community we can grow together and help each other out.
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Jaffer, it sounds to me like you will want to edit the “Single Post” file which you should see in your Theme Editor. I also sent you a link to the Wordpress documentation that should help.
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Hi Lee. Thanks for the Blokester link and welcome to the community!
Jaffer is right about the header.php file. That is where I modified my header/banner. If you want, let me know and I will write a tutorial explaining how I did it.
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Odd, but it seems that Wordpress gets more spam than Blogger. I’ve already had to remove numerous spam comments from this blog. I would have thought it would be the other way around.
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Bloke, did you turn on the Askimet Plugin ?
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No I haven’t yet Jaffer. I’m waiting to see how things go for awhile. So far the settings that I have (i.e. more than one link in a comment) has done a very good job weeding them out.
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Thank you, Bloke for the Nice Avatar compliment and the insight on WP RSS subscriptions!
I see Jaffer has opened file permissions to the Mark of the Beast (666) - hopefully, this will not open the flood-gates of digital hell? (only kidding, Jaffer)
Speaking of humor, “7 Reasons Why Blogger Users Should NOT Switch to Wordpress” post seems to be struggling to hang to the Blogger Battle!
Speaking of opening gates, has anyone updated to Wordpress 2.3.2, yet?
Seems to be some confusion (to me?) at the Bluefur.com blog which states
“Attention bloggers if you have manually installed WordPress then you should immediately upgrade to 2.3.2. A security upgrade notice has been issued by WordPress in regards to this.”
Unfortunately, there are no instructions on what to do if Bluefur.com installed WordPress 2.3.1. Does Bluefur.com perform the upgrade or do we?
I also eMailed Bluefur.com to check on this.
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I knew there would be someone making a remark on “666″ and I am not surprised it was you :D.
I am going to wait because I have never upgraded a platform yet !
I am still sitting with and older version of ExpressionEngine blog as well !
I am afraid I might screw up my database !
Bloke may be this may be a good time for a tutorial !
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Debbie, I also noticed the Wordpress upgrade notice. Let me know what Bluefur says.
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Jaffer, make certain that you backup everything before messing with the database.
Regarding tutorials, I’m working on an idea that I’m going to experiment with tomorrow. If successful it will become a very important notice indeed. Stay tuned…
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Bloke — Yes, I did just notice the Top Commenters post, but only when I viewed your blog’s main page. I usually read you from my feeds (latest posted article), so I did not see it at first. And I gather I’m a top commenter because I’m always needing help from you!
I noticed the announcement of a new version of WP. Terrified to upgrade, of course. I need a little tutorial from you, Bloke.
How is everyone else’s avatars showing up in these comments? I’d like to not be the face-less black head ‘n shoulders at some point
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Here’s a question for Bloke or anyone else: All of my post headings (top of browser window) begin with “The Junk Drawer >> Blog Archive >>”. I would like for the headings to read only with the post title. This happens for all new posts, too, not just my imported ones from Blogger. I use Windows Live Writer to compose and publish posts.
Thanks, and I hope BB doesn’t mind me throwing out a general question here.
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Hey Kathy,
Make sure you are signed into MyBloglog when you comment.
Another great tool is Gravatar which will put a picture with your e-mail whenever you comment. You don’t even need to sign in !
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Kathy, you need to click on your “Options”, “Permalinks” menus. Then under the “Common Options” heading click on “Custom, specify below” and put this code into the “Custom structure” field:
/%postname%/
That should fix your permalinks structure. Nice eh? In Blogger we had to write lines and lines of code hackery to accomplish the same thing.
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By the way, I wouldn’t try to upgrade Wordpress yourself. I think your blog host will do it for you. That’s what you pay them for. Check with them first.
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My Wordpress 2.3.2 upgrade Ticket status is open with a low priority at BlueFur.com. I hate to make assumptions yet, it seems the security leak of exposing draft posts is not a major issue?
The best Wordpress Sitemap option is also another unknown. Did you use the
Sitemap Generator Plugin for Wordpress?
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That’s the plugin Deb. It’s a good idea to make one because it will also help the search engines to index your site.
By the way, Bluefur has a toll free number 1-877-377-9020, ext. #3 for support. Give them a call tomorrow during the day.
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Bloke,
This is how my custom looks right now:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
Is it really safe to change it? I’m afraid. Won’t that mess up wherever my internal links point?
ps. I don’t plan on upgrading WordPress myself now. Will check with my host. Thank you for the suggestion.
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Testing my gravatar. Is this something I have to enable on my blog for others to use?
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Guess that didn’t work. Gotta poke around for more information. Bloke, sorry for cluttering your comments. Delete if you wish.
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Let me check if my Gravatar works here !
You can test run it at my blog as well if you want !
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Very odd ! I am signed out of MyBlog log and I can still see my picture form there and Kathy’s picture !
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Sorry. I see it did work, after I associated my photo with my account. However, I wonder if it’s working on my blog. I installed and activated Easy Gravatars and when I left a test comment, there were only outlines where the picture should be. Looked a little screwy, so I de-activated it. Maybe I’ll reactivate it and Jaffer, you can comment somewhere to see if you appear. Do you mind if you’re still here?
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WOOHOO! I see you Kathy. Don’t worry about the comments. I love comments and the more the merrier. I’m so happy to see your smiling face instead of the ghost from Christmas past.
By the way, your permalinks still don’t look right. Did you follow my instructions above?
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Bloke — Sorry to make a mess of your comments.
Jaffer — It seems it is working on my blog. I’m seeing lots of gravatars now on the comments. However, I’m curious why, in some cases, there is a very thin outline where pictures should be. When you click into those empty boxes, it loads up that person’s site. If anyone can take a look at some comments over on the Junk Drawer and tell me if it looks ugly, I’d appreciate it. I hate to have what looks like missing information on some of my readers’ comments. It works fine for many others, just not everyone, and I don’t know why. Thanks for all the help!
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Bloke — Thank you for not minding all my comments. I absolutely LOVE that I can come here for straightforward help and answers. Do you have any idea how RARE that is in the blogosphere? I think you might! Anyway, I didn’t make the change to my permalink structure, as I’m afraid to. I wrote you earlier:
Bloke,
This is how my custom looks right now:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
Is it really safe to change it? I’m afraid. Won’t that mess up wherever my internal links point?
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Don’t worry Kathy. It will work fine. Nothing will get messed up and the changes can be reversed if you want to. Just follow these directions:
In your Wordpress dashboard click on your “Options”, “Permalinks” menus. Then under the “Common Options” heading click on “Custom, specify below” and put this code into the “Custom structure” field:
/%postname%/
No worries.
By the way, I see your Avatars are working fine on your blog too. And thanks to Jaffer for helping out with customer support
Cheers!
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Bloke — That custom path doesn’t work. It makes searches and past links return a 404 error. It also did not remove the text that prepends every post title. I’ll leave it “as is.” Afraid to fiddle with it too much. But thank you for the suggestion. It’s possible I’ve done other massaging to my post structure that makes your tip invalid for me. I remember severely messing with my post structure during my migration, and a lot of manual editing within posts that had links in them. It was crazy, and that’s enough crazy for me for a while. Thank you for letting me work through this here. You’re the best!
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Bloke - Regarding spam, I personally recommend Spam Karma as an alternative to Askimet.
Kathy - Two issues here as far as I can see - the displayed TITLE tag and the permalinks for your site.
TITLE tag - the most effective way (and most search engine friendly way) is to include the following code within your header.php file
—This will display just the post title on the individual pages but display the name of the blog on the home page.
Permalinks - The most SEO friendly way of constructing your permalinks is /%postname%/. Remember that you’ll need to have write access to your .htaccess file to make any changes to your permalink structure.
If you’re absolutely laser focused with your categories and the titles might help your search engine listings then make your permalinks /%category%/%name%/ but this will only really assist your search results if you have very specific categories.
One thing you need to remember is that any changes made within the WP dashboard for permalinks will not be retrospectively applied so, for example, if your page was called domain.com/widgets/blue-widgets/ because you used /%category%/%name%/ but you’ve now changed your permalink structure to read /%name%/, the old link will no longer work.
Fortunately, and this is where WordPress kicks Bloggers butt big time, there is always a plugin to solve most things. In this instance I heartily recommend the Permalink Redirection Plugin.
After any changes you make, ensure you update your sitemap within Google Webmaster Tools. The sitemap generator Debbie mentions earlier is excellent and, again, heartily recommended
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Ackkk…..for some reason the embedded code didn’t work…grrr. OK well here’s a link to the code you need to include in your header.php file.
Link
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Thanks for the support Mike. Maybe I should rename this blog to the Blog Bloke forum for Wordpress issues
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I put the following at Kathy’s Blog as well.
The Gravatars work great and the comment section looks spiced up with all the beautiful pictures.
Now, I believe Kathy, you are using Easy Gravatar. So for all those without a face, Kathy, find a 48×48 image and upload it to your server.
Log into Wordpress admin, go to options and click on Easy Gravatars.
Replace the address of the Default Image URL.
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Hi Bloke, Mike, and Kathy,
Since we have a WordPress issues Forum and a moment to breath between two major holidays plus sailing over to the Bay of WordPress,
can we revisit the Permalink issue which seems to need the SEO friendly structure code: /%postname%/ ?
Unfortunately, using /%postname%/ structure drops the “.html” from the Blogger post link that is needed to redirect Blogger posts links for me and possibly Kathy had the same issue.
In order to fix redirecting Blogger Post Links, I (and Kathy?) needed to use this custom structure: /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
Perhaps, the Permalink structure can be changed to the /%postname%/ SEO structure in the future after the old Blogger post links die off?
Or does Mike’s Permalink Redirection Plugin solve the Blogger problem sooner?
PS. will call Bluefur support when they open.
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Hi Deb. I’m having the same problem. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no answer. I’ve searched Google and tried the various techniques out there like this one http://laffers.net/howtos/howto-redirect-blogger-to-wordpress, but nothing works.
The bottom line is:
1. Wordpress doesn’t make html docs.
2. Apparently, when Wordpress imports it will change the structure of the permalink to reflect the post title. Meaning, the link structure will be different than the original Blogger post if you have altered the title in any way after first publishing it.
3. Unfortunately I often do that, so after the import most of my links are now structured differently than the original Blogger post. So in my case it looks like I’m screwed.
4. Hence, I’ve given up on trying to find an easy solution. I’ve resolved myself to having to manually edit all of my internal links. Considering that I’ve got thousands of them, I am faced with a very long project for me to do over the next year. Happy New Year, yeah right
5. So that means I’ve also given up on trying to redirect from Blogger post pages. I’m just going to put a redirect for the home page, and a meta noindex tag so that the Search Engines won’t penalize me for double content. Take a look at this post http://www.techcounter.com/wordpress/301-permanent-redirect-from-blogger-beta-to-wordpress/ for more about this.
I know, this is depressing and I wish I had better news but that’s the way I see it unless someone else comes up with a better solution.
Considering that I have thousands of internal links that need to be changed, it looks I will be spending most of my time next year editing. So much for writing.
Now please excuse me as I go shoot myself.
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I don’t know that this will help. It’s more or less just an explanation of what I had to do:
1. I notified Google to stop indexing my Blogspot blog.
2. I set up custom structure to this: /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%
3. That made most of my former search engine results continue working, pointing to the WordPress blog.
4. I had to manually change all my internal links to the new structure. Bloke, at the time I had 112 posts. The process of changing all my internal links from ….p=XXX took one hour, so maybe you’re only looking at 10 hours of manual editing.
5. I installed the Redirection plug-in that gives me a 404 Log that I can check for places where old links don’t work. They are always the ones where an article (a, an, the, etc) have been stripped from the post title, on the way over from Blogger. I check it daily and set up redirects for every post that returned a 404.
I’m still unsure whether I have more work to do on the Blogger side of the equation. Duplicate content is coming to mind.
I’m sorry if I’m not explaining this very well. My ignorance is showing, but perhaps some nugget of this will help someone else down the road, as sketchy as my explanation is!
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I’m really going to throw this discussion into an elementary level. I’ve been following this thread and really trying to understand what you all are talking about. I get the gist of most of it, but at the most basic level I guess I don’t really understand what permalinks are. Are they only important if you are trying to monetize your blog?
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My three Observations for Bloke, Kathy, and Lee:
WordPress Upgrades:
Service claims Bluefur takes care of the WordPress upgrades?
Service claims the WordPress version is located in the cPanel yet, unable to locate it.
However, the fantversion.php file states this: 11.15.0-RELEASE_17853 = ‘2.3.1′ ;
which seems to point to the old WordPress version?
Permalink redirection:
added: to the old Blogger template.
Seems like no matter which Permalink redirect solution is tried, Google eventually returns a 404 page for the old Blogger Post Permalink.
I am not sure changing internal links every time Google returns a 404 error helps.
Since Google seems intent on sabotaging our efforts, using the SEO recommendation /%postname%/ and verifying internal links are also using the same structure might be the way to go?
We seem to be swimming through the dark unknown waters of Google search strategies again.
@ Lee: Briefly, a Permalink is the URL address of each Blog Post that helps search engines and visitors locate old Posts in the archives of the Blog. I suppose Permalinks may be more important to Money-income producing Blogs yet, Permalinks are also beneficial to non-profit Blogs as well!
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Great, just Great! — forget to trick the Html tags to read the code: <meta content=’NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW’ name=’ROBOTS’/> @ added: (missing code) to the old Blogger template, in my previous comment!
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Kathy, I have almost 900 posts with literally thousands of internal links that are still pointing to the old blog. I spent 10 hours yesterday manually changing them and I barely made a dent. I still have more content that I want import.
Lee, like Debbie says permalinks are the post URL links. They are the stuff that search engines thrive on and if they are screwed up so is your blog.
I agree with Debbie that there doesn’t seem to be any known method out there for 301 redirection that actually works. But what’s the problem with the meta tag Debbie? That’s what I’ve added to my old Blogger template.
I have an idea how I could fix my internal links but that would mean taking this blog offline, destroying my database and re-importing again. But I’ve planned for the launch of this blog tomorrow and my wife and child are already complaining I live at the computer too much.
Sigh!
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Hi Bloke,
No problems with the Meta Tag!
My only problem was the HTML printing of the meta tag to reveal which meta tag code was added to our old Blogger template as way to confirm we have taken the same steps to solve the Permalink redirection problem.
Sorry about that early New Year confusion!
P.S. For now, I need to live with using the additional “.html” Permalink structure due to current Backlinks.
Hopefully, Google will eventually recognize the new WordPress Permalinks?
For now, I have stopped worrying about the post link redirection problem that has no immediate solution.
Happy New Year
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I have finally discovered why Permalink Redirects from Blogger and WordPress are not 100%.
Google Grammar drops the words “The”, “A”, etc. from the Post Title when Blogger creates the Post Link.
For example,
Post Title: The Silence of Sambro Island Lighthouse is Golden?
Blogger:
http://lighthousestars.com/2007/11/silence-of-sambro-island-lighthouse-is.html
WordPress:
http://lighthousestars.com/2007/11/the-silence-of-sambro-island-lighthouse-is-golden.html
____________________
Google also shortens long Post Titles in their Post Link whereas WordPress uses the full Post Title to create their Permalink.
I am not sure there is a solution that will automatically fix this. On the hand, a search of the Post Title with these issues reveals most of the Blogger Permalinks have been replaced by the WordPress Permalinks. No doubt, the few remaining Blogger Permalinks will be dead soon and Post Permalink Redirection will have completed its job??? (In other words, Redirection will no longer be required)
Hopefully, this information helps?
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OK let’s have a look at this with my tired and hungover brain.
The Permalink Redirection plugin is suitable for when your internal WP permalinks have been changed. It won’t help with the legacy links from Blogger. I didn’t realise that you needed the .html for the legacy links to work. How very odd…
I’ll have a play around on one of my test servers and see what I can come up with. I do recall reading about a way to make the WP posts .html so I’ll see if I can hunt it down.
Regarding the naming issues, you should be able to change the post slug for any imported pages fairly easily.
Manage — Posts — Edit — Post slug
Hopefully this will overcome any problems there.
Finding WP version - You can find this within your WordPress Dashboard - it’s at the bottom of the page.
WordPress version - The current one available using the Fantastico installer with BlueFlur is 2.3.1
301 redirects do work OK. The problem here is that the 301 would need to be placed in the .htaccess file on the Blogger server which isn’t possible.
So, to recap, my understanding is that legacy Blogger URLs haven’t been imported correctly using the WP import script. What specifically is wrong with them? I’m sure the answer is above but my alcohol addled brain is struggling to function today!
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The conclusion I’ve come to is the conversion from Blogger to Wordpress during the import procedure has changed the permalink structure sufficiently that redirection is impossible. The links must be identical for redirection to work. That would mean manually changing each post link to be exactly the same, and in my case I have have way too many posts to make it feasible.
The way I see it is a redirection will only help for two reasons:
1. To retain Google juice goodwill that you’ve built with the old blog;
2. To redirect users who do not yet know the blog has moved.
BUT after the search engines have made note of your “noindex” “nofollow” meta tag on the old blog, and the new blog has been reindexed the concern over redirection should become moot. So perhaps the sensible thing to do would be for us to just forget about it and move on, and let the search engines figure it out.
As for me I have an even bigger problem. All of my thousands of internal links are still pointing to the old blog. And because Wordpress has changed their structure a simple search and replace wil not work.
Sigh!
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Folks — Just a heads-up that I answered my own question about how to remove “Blog Archive” from all of my post titles. This was an annoyance for me because my posts would show up in Google results like this:
“The Junk Drawer >> Blog Archive >> Actual post title, blah, blah blah”
The words “Blog Archive” took up too much of that precious real estate. I guess it’s theme-specific, because I don’t see this happening on everyone’s WP blogs.
This is what I used to remove the two extraneous words:
http://www.ehowtoguru.com/2007/10/16/how-to-remove-blog-archive-from-your-wordpress-post-title
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Kathy - My advice would be to change around the order of your title tag to POST TITLE — BLOG NAME.
The reason I suggest that is only the first 65 characters of your page title are used for SEO purposes. If you’re writing your titles with search engines in mind and are creating keyword/keyphrase rich titles, you’re currently reducing your hit rate because the first 13 characters of your TITLE are the name of the site.
Just my two cents
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BB - Have you submitted a new sitemap for blogbloke.com? Also are all your internal post links formatted:
a) instabloke.com/2007/10/random-post-title.html
or
b) blogbloke.com/the-random-post-title/
I’m still trying to get my head around the way the import has screwed things up…
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Scratch the second part of the question - I’ve just found a couple of practical examples on your site and can see the problem.
Crap
It seems like it’s caused by Blogger removing certain grammatical phrases as suggested by Debbie and WordPress isn’t able to decipher what Blogger has sent over.
Double crap
OK so there’s no easy solution to this as far as I can see. I was hoping I could work some SQL magic on your database but it seems like there are a number of factors here including some which would need to be manually applied.
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Mike, I haven’t got round to the sitemap yet. From what I can figure Wordpress import creates permalinks based on the post title, as opposed to the actual permalink structure. In my case I’m in a habit of changing my titles after hitting the publish button. Hence, the links are now incompatible.
Kathy, Mike is absolutely right about your post titles format. When someone is searching for information they are not looking for your blog title. They are searching for specific keywords.
You want to put your most important keywords first in your title so they won’t by edited out of the first 65 characters, and the search engines assume their order of priority.
In other words:
“Bloggers on the Steroids”…
will get a better search result for the keyword “Bloggers” than…
“Most Bloggers on Steroids”.
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UPDATE: The issue with importing Blogger posts into Wordpress is a combination of both what I and Kathy have noted. Obviously they are not compatible and there is no way it seems to fix this except via manual manipulation.
Triple CRAP! I’m screwed
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