Like any relationship that is headed downhill I hung on for far longer than was necessary. Or than was good for me. As I mentioned two weeks ago in my post about wedding dresses said last week tough, I am single, so what am I talking about? Blogger and I. In May I made the switch – I am officially a WordPress blogger and could not be more delighted. The transition was not easy but it went better that I expected and now I feel like a butterfly, I can fully spread my wings.
Why Did I Switch?
In my “real world” job I work in the digital department of an advertising agency so SEO and social media actually my job and having my own personal blog hosted on Blogger was just not cutting it. There are so many backend Search Engine Optimization features that I have seen first hand make a huge difference that are just not available on the free Google based platform. I will write a post about this at a later point but it is similar to the phrase, “The shoemakers kids have no shoes.” Ironic, especially because my blog is called Sparkles & Shoes.
Well, I am glad the wonderful Lisette was been able to help me with this transition. After 100 emails, three chats with annoying customer service reps, and 21 direct messages on Twitter we have it figured out exactly the way I wanted. I am sure most people do not have nearly this much back and forth when making the switch but I wanted to make sure every little kink was worked out and Lisette was surely did not dissapoint.
Search Engine Optimization: I am now able to make my blog posts much more accessible to people on the Internet looking for the topic of my blog post. Between being able to add focus keywords, SEO Title, a meta description, categories, and tags I have already seen a huge increase in organic traffic of people searching for easy salmon recipes or the white on white fashion trend.
Plugins: I will do a post all about these but I absolutely love the hundreds of add-on features available on self-hosted WordPress sites that I can use to make my blog standout just that much more. Most of these are backend and will not be seen by anyone, but they are great!
Widgets: With Blogger I was used to dragging and dropping their pre-set options into my sidebar and calling it a day. With WordPress I knew there was a more customization possible and had a list of everything I wanted and Lisette rocked it out of the park, especially with those categories on my sidebar. I wanted an easy way to access the things I talk about most frequently on my blog and I love the interactive widget to feature my posts on fashion, photography, New York City, travel, my style icons, and my Sparkle Session interviews.
Responsive Design: I had a simple mobile template switched on for Sparkles and Shoes when I was on Blogger but it was either a yes or a no. You either got my pretty blog on a big screen or the plain and boring mobile version. With WordPress no matter what size the screen is you will see the nice sleek design formatted differently, which I love! (Want to test it out? Grab the bottom corner of your screen and make the window smaller – see how it changes? Yay!)
Things I Was Was Worried About:
Part of the reason I waited so long to switch to WordPress was because of the issues and negatives I have read from other bloggers who have made the switch. Topping the list of concerns were:
Kacie's Kloset says
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
http://www.kaciesklosetblog.com/
Nancy @ Neatly-Packaged says
I love the new site 🙂 I just recently switched from Blogger to WP myself! 🙂
http://neatly-packaged.com/
vanessa says
great photos!
TheVogueWord
TheVogueWord
Colleen says
Thanks for posting this! Good information for new bloggers like me! xo
Alyssa says
Good thing you hired someone to help your transfer. Last year, when Blogger was no longer working for me I decided to switched too but since I have a background in Web Design (I studied the basic during college) I thought it would be easy if I do it myself. Well, it wasn’t but overall I’m glad I switched because blogging in WordPress is much easier and the plugins are Web Design God’s gift to us LOL
STYLE VANITY
Mahsa (The Crushworthy) says
Great post, I’ve always been a big fan of WordPress and think to really optimize the potential of your blog you have to go that route. The plugins are endless and you can really customize the site to make it your own, even if you’re working off of a standard theme. I would love to see a future post about how you optimize for SEO on your wordpress site, I still haven’t done much of that though my blog is not even a month old. Cheers!
http://www.thecrushworthy.com
Chelsea says
Congrats! I am a brand new blog so just started e blogger since it was free and I didn’t know how long it might last. So it was a great place to start but definitely see the upside of WordPress. Hope you continue to love it!
Helene says
I definitely do see the benefits! I think there can be some great things about wordpress but I’m still a blogger gal!
Ashley says
Looks gorgeous!! It seems like everyone is starting the switch!
Lisette says
Thanks so much, love! You were a doll to work with! Honestly! XOXO.
After my transfer I also saw a drop in views, but (and this is a BIG but), when I compared my Blogger stats to my Google Analytics stats, there was NO drop in page views. None. So, it led me to believe that Blogger’s stats are inflated. Even when I was on Blogger I saw the disparity (but ignorance is bliss, right?) and ignored it.
I think the difference is that Blogger counts Google robots crawling your site as pageviews when it’s really not people viewing your site. Google Analytics is something everyone should use (many third-party advertisers ask for GA stats anyway) to truly see what your statistics are. In fact, GA reports more pageviews than my JetPack plugin…so the proof is in the pudding!
Have you checked yours?
Thanks again, sweetheart! xoxo
Rachel says
WordPress is the way to go! We’re actually helping a few interns at my company move their blogs from Blogger to WordPress now that they’ve learned all the benefits (and all the bad parts of Blogger!)