October 3, 2012

How to Change Your Blog Address in Blogger




You know how to create a blog on Blogger platform, without any doubt. Obviously, Blogger is not operated with the availability of massive built-in plugins where you can click and add right into your blog. But there are many choices and still it's much HTML friendly, so you can add any third party HTML / JavaScript based plugins very easily. It's true that quality content matters in a blog for readers to embrace the blog as a valuable resource. In addition to content, have you ever been thinking about your blog address? I mean, URL of your blog. Do you wanna change your blog address you have chosen initially when you create your blog?


Necessity of Blog Address Change


Things can go as you never predicted. Initially, you may have thinking about blogging your personal stuff, but you may now review your favorite books or write about social media, life and family, online marketing, pitbulls or random cool stuff. I know, it happens. So, does your blog address comply with your content? It doesn't need to, but it will help users identify what is your blog about, plus more exposure. Anyway you don't wanna have a blog address with completely different meaning compared to your blog content. Imagine you are blogging about online marketing strategies and you named your blog as FamilyAndMe. I love it, but don't follow it. It doesn't make any sense. I'm terrible with that, right? ;) My blog name doesn't reflect what it's suppose to offer, but I'm cool with it, love it and doesn't have opposite meaning compared to content as it has no meaning at all. Is your blog address easy to remember? That's a good question. Think about it for a while.


It's Quite Easy


If you are wondering how, it's just too easy. Create a new blog with the preferred blog address and export your existing content to it. Sounds very easy solution, isn't it? But hey, it's not the way Blogger expecting you to follow, if you wanna change your blog address while you are on blogspot subdomain. Yeah, you can't change domain name after establishing on a custom domain. Blogger made it more user friendly. You can change the blog address or URL of any existing blog without thinking of creating a new blog and exporting existing content. You will have same blog, but different URL. Blogger settings allows you to change your blog address instantly and the only requirement is that the new blog URL you are thinking of should be still available to use. If someone already using it, you have to go with another one. Isn't it obvious? If you are thinking about changing your blog URL, let's figure out how to.


Steps:


2. Click on your Blog Title.

3. Jump to Settings tab from left pane.


4. Now find Publishing heading at Basic settings tab.

5. Click on Edit link corresponds to your current blog address.


6. Enter your preferred new blog address in the active text field and click Save to confirm change.


Note: If your new blog address is still available for you, it will save without any problem. But if it isn't, you will prompt to use another subdomain name.


More Information:

* Make sure to update all your external links point to your blog or posts with the new blog address you have chosen.

* Search engines will take some time to update your new changes in search results. But you can notify your changes to search engines to crawl them quickly as possible.


Enjoy :-)




Awesome! Thanks for coming by and taking your time to read this post :) I hope you have learnt something today. Now you can share it with your friends and I'd love to hear from you too.






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Harleena Singh said...

Informative post yet again Mayura!


I'm glad that I knew this one way and did exactly the same when I was on Bloggers. :)

Of course, now that I shifted onto WordPress things are much smoother, but I did love Bloggers for it's nice and simple ways.

I guess having a straight .com after your chosen domain name is any day better than having a blogspot.com showing up.


Thanks for sharing, and would surely pass this along so that a few friends of mine who are still on Bloggers can use this information. :)

Brenda Lee said...

Great tutorial Mayura and pretty cool with those secret linky's above (pitbulls). :)

Sangram Nandkhile said...

i knew this trick..but liked the way you explained things in '
Necessity of Blog Address Change'..good work

Lisa Buben said...

Thanks Mayura, this is something I have to work on with another one of mine, on the to do list :)

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Harleena,


Well, I'm hearing from a blogger who has been through it :) It's very useful just if current address doesn't match with the content or wanna go for a new one dear.


I'll second that too Harleena :) The unique online identity matters and blogspot domain may problematic as people used to abuse free blog platforms for spam activities. And a custom domain reflects how much does he/she dedicated to the work online.


Anyway free platform is really helpful for people who can't afford to it first place :) I couldn't too, but made it.


Thanks for stopping by and commenting dear :) Glad you could relate to this though you are on WordPress. Always appreciate passing information to those who need 'em.


Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Brenda,


When I write about this I thought about your recent domain name changes :) It's really helpful if things doesn't go as we imagined. Owh secret links? ;) Ha ha... You found 'em ha...


Thanks for stopping by and sending me your compliments dear :)


Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Sangram,


I will be surprised if you didn't know about it mate :) I know you explore everything out there.


Thanks for coming over and glad you enjoyed the post mate :) Yeah, thanks for compliment too...


Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Lisa,


Very cool... I'm glad it helping you out dear :) I hope, well, I know you will come up with a great blog name for the blog you need a change.


Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts on it dear :)


Cheers...

Barry Wells said...

Hi Mayura,


I've only ever worked with WordPress so if I wanted to change I'd buy another domain name and point them towards each other.


I didn't know that blogger wouldn't let you migrate your site so this sounds like the perfect solution Mayura.


People often have a change of heart and decide to follow a different topic/niche with their blogs and the content can become non relevant to the domain so its really good that they include the ability to change it.


Good tips Mayura, take care.


Barry

JB said...

Cool tip, Mayura as always.
You are posting like crazy lately. ;) I hope it's contagious! Having a sound blog url is important, especially when you're blogging for a certain niche. Could one use a global search and replace in the Blogger XML file to let everything point to the new addy, or use redirects? Just wondering.
Grat post, buddy!

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Barry,


Yeah, for self-hosted WordPress it's not available :) But if you are on a free WordPress blog with wordpress.com subdomain, you can change your site URL as on Blogger, Barry :)


I agree with you mate :) People may start off with a topic or they don't know what to blog at first sometimes :) So, for them, ability to change URL is a really important factor to move on without losing content in their blogs. It's a perfect solution as you said, if they change their mind half-way.


Really thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughtful comment while you are scheduled to meet doctor Barry :) I encourage you to rest anyway. You can comment after things are perfect for you. I don't mind, you know that mate :)


Take care and be well Barry :)


Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Jan,


Am I? :D In this week I wanted to change things a bit and see how it goes Jan. I try not to post more than 2 posts anyway. I know my readers are busy and don't wanna let 'em go missing my posts ;)


I'll second that Jan ;) As you defined, a sound blog URL matters most of the time but one can go for his/her choice without misrepresenting content via blog address, right? Can be branded later on ;)


One can change the URLs in Blogger XML file if they have used old one, right after new address taken place. But we can't take control of external links Jan. If other sites have been pointing to old URLs, they will be dead ends. Else we have to go on and ask to update URLs.


However we can't redirect URLs there Jan. It's better if we could. But changing our URL means freeing up older one for others to use. So as it can be used by another blogger, redirecting is not practical there mate :) I don't wanna tell you all, you know stuff about programming better than me ;)


For search engines, it will be alright after crawling pages with new blog address. But will take time :) Better submitting sitemaps in that case to crawl quickly and all pages.


Thanks for coming over and sharing your ideas mate :) I'm glad you asked that question. Hope someone will certainly find it helpful too.


Cheers...

Adrienne said...

You are the Blogger King Mayura and I know that anyone using Blogger really appreciates you sharing all these cool tips. I know that changing a blog address can be confusing for some but you've definitely helped them through this process.


Great job on the tutorial... All of yours are so easy to follow.


~Adrienne

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Adrienne,


Ha ha :D Thank you so much dear. Of course Adrienne, changing could be messy as there is no way to redirect users automatically to new blog address, if the blogger has lot of content and already there are many number of backlinks have been made on the web.


I don't encourage to change blog address if blogger has gone so far with the blog. But there could be MUST DO situations. They have to decide it sooner, if they wanna go with it or change it. Anyway blogger has to live with decisions he/she made :)


Thanks for coming over and owh yeah, for your wonderful compliments too Adrienne :) Love to have a supporting community.


Cheers...

Praveen Rajarao said...

Hi Mayura - I was using blogspot several years ago, and never really had the right path laid out to me then.


Gave it up for WordPress and have since been with the same. However, these are excellent tips and you have explained it well. Will surely help all those using blogger out there.

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Praveen,


I hope bloggers on Blogger platform would like it if they wanna change it :) Keywords in the URL helps increase visibility, right? :) I read on a post of yours too.


Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts mate :)


Cheers...

greg urbano said...

one of the reasons i choose to use blogger is the free domain mapping!

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Greg,


I agree there :) It's a very useful feature on Blogger platform for bloggers as they don't need to go through complex set up. It made easy :)


Thanks for coming over and commenting...


Cheers...

Praveen Rajarao said...

Yes quite right..using the keywords in your post title does optimize it further and having the keywords in the very first paragraph of your article too.

Mayura De Silva said...

Yeah Praveen, keywords helps a lot :) AND yeah, the first paragraph mostly matters if your meta description is automatically created and based on first paragraph.


For me, I write 'em all as Blogger don't create it automatically. It makes sense though as we can have different wordings :)


Actually I've been paying attention on keywords at URL since Blogger started offering permalinks recently :) Else it's just writing a blog post.


Cheers...

Sarah Sackett said...

This information is super helpful! I am thinking about changing my blog name (and domain), but I do have a lot of traffic from pinterest and worry that I won't really be able to redirect all the repins and things that help get traffic to the blog, so I wondered if there is anyway to do redirecting on a blog?

If I bought a custom domain with the new blog title, will that automatically redirect my blog posts (i.e. www.newblogtitle.com/posttilefromoldblog)? Or is there just no way to save these external links when doing a blog name change?

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Sarah,


If you gonna change the URL of your blog, you will have to change the URLs of your pins too :)

If you are gonna set up a custom domain for your blog, I'd recommend doing it without changing existing blog URL :) Just set up new domain.


When you set up new domain, the old URLs will be redirected automatically to new domain and even visitors coming from Pinterest will land on your new domain too. So, you won't lose any traffic :)

Just set up new custom domain and you are safe :)

Cheers...