Blogging is a great way how to show up your business or your thoughts to the whole world. If you are just starting with blog you can take advantage of free blog hosting providers which allows anyone to have own blog. While many bloggers prefer Wordpress I personally get used to Google Blogspot. I like it because it is easy to setup, easy to use, SEO friendly and you can customize your blog in many ways, but I admit these are just my excuses why I am still stuck with Blogspot, the main reason is very simple I am just lazy to learn how Wordpress works. Ok but now let’s return to the main point...
There is one big drawback which all free blog hosting providers have and its importance increase especially when you want to create professionally looking and credible blog. I am talking about the extension such as blogspot in your blog URL. I have read on many webmaster forums that if you have blog with a URL name such as www.yourURL.blogspot.com, you may be not taken very seriously.
Personally I don’t see the reason why you should be taken less seriously just because of your domain URL. I think the blog credibility should be primarily measured in quality of content which blog offers and not in domain name. I have seen many “blogspot extended” blogs which looked professionally and offers really valuable and useful information.
But on the other hand I have seen many blogspot blogs whose only purpose was to spam people (in one study almost 80% of blogspot blogs were detected as spam, for more details see Picture 1). Also if your purpose is to create a business blog the blogspot extension is just not suitable.
Picture 1
Source: http://www.seroundtable.com/TR-2007-27.pdf
So it can be useful to remove the blogspot extension to gain some more respect. If you own small online business or you are inexperienced blogger, you are probably not willing to pay lot of money for own domain and hosting. Also you probably don’t want to spend hours and hours searching for the best suitable blog hosting solution.
So how to get rid of blogspot extension simply and at low price?
Fortunately there is great method how to shake off your blogspot URL extension without the need of additional payments for web hosting. You will save your money and your time as well. This way your only expenditure is $10 per year for registration of your own domain. There are no further fees for hosting because you will be still hosted by Google for free. You will also get your own business email based on your domain name so no more “gmail” extension for your professional email (although the email will be still hosted by Google, it will appear like own hosted email). What’s more you don’t have to worry about your readers who get used to your blogspot extended blog, your old blogspot URL address will be automatically redirected to new domain.
The simple process of migrating to own domain
1. Log in to your blogger account click on Settings and then on Publishing tab. Now you should see window like this
2. Click on the Custom Domain link (it is underlined in the picture above). you will be taken to another page (as seen at the picture below).
3. Here you can choose your desired domain name and the extension (you can choose .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz). If you are done check the availability of your chosen domain.
4. If your chosen domain is available you will be redirected to this page.
This si your order page, check if your domain name is correct. If you are satisfied with the order click Continue to registration. Now you will be able to buy your domain. After your purchasing will be processed your blog will be moved to your new domain name. The whole process will take not more than 5 minutes.
Tip: Don’t wait any longer
If you are thinking about your own domain you should know one unpleasant thing: You will loose all your SEO value you have built up with your old blog. Therefore I recommend you to register the domain as fast as possible. Later you will move to your own domain the more (in the terms of SEO) you will loose. If you are starting new blog and think seriously about blogging, buy the domain immediately after you start your blog, you will avoid painful loss of your SEO value in the future.
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