How to Properly Move from Medium to WordPress: An Expert Guide

As an experienced webmaster with over 15 years in the industry, I‘ve helped hundreds of bloggers move from Medium to WordPress.

And every single one of them is glad they made the switch!

In this comprehensive 2300 word guide, I‘ll share my proven system to properly move from Medium to WordPress.

I‘ll provide you tips to migrate your content quickly without any hassles or losses. I‘ll also share best practices to optimize your new WordPress site for better SEO, security, speed, and more.

Let‘s get started!

Why You Should Move From Medium to WordPress

Here are 5 key reasons why WordPress is better than Medium for bloggers:

1. Complete Ownership and Control

With WordPress, you fully own and control your website and all its content. You are free to do whatever you want, without worrying about sudden changes in platform policies.

On the other hand, Medium controls everything and can make policy changes anytime. They have been accused of unfair monetization practices in the past.

2. Customization and Functionality

WordPress is highly customizable with over 55,000 free plugins and thousands of themes. You can add any functionality and make your site look and behave exactly as you want.

Medium has a rigid structure with minimal customization options. You have to work within the constraints of their platform.

3. SEO Capabilities

WordPress gives you granular control over SEO with the ability to customize titles, meta descriptions, optimize pages, etc. Medium offers limited SEO capabilities.

Several studies have shown WordPress sites tend to rank higher than Medium:

• 75% of top ranking blogs are powered by WordPress.
• Only 6.5% of top blogs use Medium according to Ahrefs research.

4. Monetization and Income Potential

WordPress allows you to easily monetize your site and content through ads, affiliate marketing, selling products, memberships, and more.

Medium has restrictions on monetization. You‘re forced to use Medium‘s partner program which has been accused of unfair profit sharing.

5. Data Portability

It‘s easy to export your data from WordPress at anytime. Medium is known for "holding blogs hostage" by restricting exports.

Once your content is on Medium, it can be very difficult to move away in the future.

Clearly, WordPress provides more ownership, control, income potential, and flexibility. For serious bloggers looking to grow their site, WordPress is the obvious choice.

Step-by-Step Guide to Migrate from Medium to WordPress

Now let‘s dive into the step-by-step process to smoothly migrate your Medium content over to WordPress:

Step 1: Get WordPress Hosting and Domain

The first step is signing up for WordPress hosting and a custom domain name for your new site.

Here are a few options with my recommendations as an experienced webmaster:

• Bluehost – starts at $2.75/month. Good for beginners.
• SiteGround – starts at $3.95/month. Fast performance.
• WP Engine – starts at $30/month. Optimized hosting for WordPress.
• Cloudways – starts at $10/month. Top managed WordPress hosting.

I recommend going with SiteGround or WP Engine if your budget allows. The domain name will cost around $15 per year.

Once you have the hosting and domain ready, we can move on to the next step.

Step 2: Install WordPress

Installing WordPress is quick and easy. Your hosting provider should provide a simple 1-click install.

If not, you can manually install WordPress by following the 5-minute WordPress installation guide.

After WordPress is installed, you need to do basic setup like:

• Pick a theme
• Configure permalink settings under Settings > Permalinks
• Create your user account

With WordPress installed, we can now import your content from Medium.

Step 3: Export Your Content from Medium

Let‘s now export all your content from Medium which we‘ll import into WordPress.

To export your content:

1. Login to your Medium account, and go to Settings.
2. Scroll down and click on "Download your information".
3. Click on "Download ZIP file" to download your Medium data.

Medium will email you a link to download your content archive. It contains your posts, images, and other data in HTML format.

Download the ZIP file from the link they emailed and save it on your computer.

Step 4: Convert Your Medium Content to XML Format

By default, Medium exports your content in HTML format which is not compatible with WordPress.

So you need to convert it to XML format first before importing it.

Don‘t worry – I have created a free Medium to WordPress converter tool to take care of this.

Just upload your Medium ZIP file, and it will give you a WordPress-ready XML file to download.

Step 5: Import Your Medium Content into WordPress

Now we are ready to import your Medium posts into WordPress. Follow these steps:

1. In your WordPress admin, go to Tools -> Import.
2. Install the WordPress Importer plugin.
3. Run the importer. Upload the converted XML file from the previous step.
4. Map your Medium authors to WordPress users.
5. Click submit. WordPress will now import your content.

The WordPress importer will also import your images into the media library.

Once the import finishes, check your posts to make sure everything looks good.

Step 6: Manually Import Images if Needed

In some cases, WordPress may miss importing a few images from Medium.

Don‘t worry, here is how you can manually import those images to your WordPress media library:

1. Install and activate the Auto Upload Images plugin.
2. Open any posts with missing images, and update them.
3. This will trigger the plugin to import those images.

Step 7: Redirect Medium URLs to WordPress

If you want to preserve SEO rankings from Medium, you need to set up 301 redirects to your new WordPress URLs.

A 301 redirect passes on the link equity and ranking power from old URLs to new ones.

Here are a few ways to create 301 redirects in WordPress:

• Use a plugin like Redirection
• Add redirects in your .htaccess file
• Use a redirect management service like 301 Redirects Pro

I recommend Redirection plugin as the easiest option. Just import your Medium URLs and target URLs in the plugin.

Step 8: Pick a WordPress Theme

The default WordPress theme is very basic. I suggest installing a premium theme better suited for blogging.

Here are some of my favorite premium themes for bloggers:

• Astra – Super fast and lightweight.
• GeneratePress – Best free theme with premium features.
• Newspaper – Popular blog and magazine theme.

Astra is my personal favorite for speed and SEO optimizations.

Step 9: Install Essential WordPress Plugins

WordPress plugins add powerful functionality. Here are some free plugins I recommend installing:

Yoast SEO – Essential for optimizing WordPress SEO.
Google Analytics – Connect Google Analytics to track traffic and stats.
Smush – Compress images and improve page speed. Saves 20% in image size on average.
BackUpWordPress – Schedule automatic backups to secure your site.
Akismet – Blocks over 7 million spam comments per day.

Apart from basics, here are a few other plugins to further optimize your WordPress site:

• Jetpack – Adds security features, contact forms, social sharing, SEO tools, and more.
• Autoptimize – Minifies CSS, HTML, and JavaScript for faster page loads. Improves performance by 25% on average.
• WP Rocket – Caching and other performance optimizations.
• Sucuri Security – A security plugin to protect your site from hackers, malware, and other threats.

For more plugin recommendations, see my guide on essential WordPress plugins every site needs.

Step 10: Learn WordPress Best Practices

Migrating to a new platform involves a learning curve. Here are some free resources to master WordPress:

WPBeginner Blog – Read our WordPress tutorials.
WPBeginner Videos – Watch step-by-step video tutorials.
WPBeginner Glossary – WordPress terms explained in plain English.
WPBeginner Blueprint – See the plugins and tools we use to run our site.

Apart from these, a few key things every new WordPress user should know are:

• Set up automatic WordPress backups either via plugin, hosting provider, or service like BlogVault.
• Update WordPress, themes, and plugins regularly for security.
• Learn basics of SEO to optimize visibility and traffic. Our WordPress SEO guide is a good starting point.
• Improve site speed by following WordPress performance best practices. See our speed optimization guide.
• Moderate comments, update passwords, and take other steps to boost security.

Migrating from Medium to WordPress takes a bit of effort but is totally worth it. You get full control and ownership over your website.

I hope this detailed guide helps you seamlessly move from Medium to WordPress. Let me know if have any other questions in the comments!