Goodbye, Blogger. Hello, WordPress!

Jessalee asks a great question in the comments of Best Free Blog Hosting: Blogger or WordPress.com?:

How would one go about driving their regular traffic to their new blog? By just putting up a post, “Find me here,” or whatever?

Regrettably, Blogger doesn’t make it easy to redirect all your traffic to your new blog. It would be nice if they did, but I can’t blame them for not spending time on that feature

So if you’re moving from Blogger to WordPress, or anywhere else, here’s what I’d do once you’re up and running at the new site:

1. Write a farewell post like Kim’s or May’s, and be sure to remind people that they’ll need to change their bookmarks, blogrolls and RSS subscriptions.
2. Then, add a very prominent header at the top of every page on the blog letting visitors know that you’ve moved and directing them to your post for more details. That’s so people coming in on any page of your site (not just the homepage) will be alerted that you’ve moved.

Now, you could also add a META refresh to your page header to automatically redirect people to your new site, but I’m torn on whether to do that or not. Personally, I hate being automatically redirected that way, and I don’t think it’s necessary if you follow the two steps above.

That said, I could also be convinced that it was a good idea. Can you tell I’m riding the fence on this one?

Bottom line, though, is that you absolutely need to do all you can to let people know you’ve moved. No sense in having to rebuild all that traffic at your new location.

In fact, after a month or two, you might want to take a quick look at who’s still linking to your old blog so that you can drop them a line to let them know you’ve moved. To do that, go to Yahoo and enter this in the web search box: link:http://yourblogurl.blogspot.com

That’s it! It’s not a perfect solution, but it will get you most of the way there.