Typepad to Wordpress ...

Many firms that sell a Typepad to Wordpress service make it sound scary. Nothing could be further from the truth.  The actual process of moving from Typepad to Wordpress is very easy.  With one exception.  That is the 301 redirect from your Typepad blog to WP.  That will be explained last.

Typepad to Wordpress

In Seven easy steps here is the Typepad to Wordpress blog move:

   1. Download Wordpress – Go to Wordpress.org and download the latest version of Wordpress.

   2. Wordpress set up – Set this up on your own domain with the basic install and any template or customization you like.  You can use the default template if you like.  Ask me if you have questions on this but here is their 5 minute install Wordpress guide.

   3. Install the following plugins – Platinum all in one as SEO,  a redirection plugins (this is only needed if you do not use the Platinum all in one – because this plugin comes with a 301 redirection)

Takes care of Wordpress internal redirection that might result after a move from Typepad

, a Google site map plugin, a normal simple site map plugin, a related post plugin. That is all you really need, you don’t want to overwhelm you Wordpress blog with too many plugins because things could stop working if you have the top 50 plugins installed. You can do this right in the Wordpress control panel under automatic plugin install.

Add plugins to Wordpress to improve your Typepad blog

4. Set Wordpress permalinks – Go to general settings in your control panel, permalinks and set up your permalink structure of the way you want.  By recommend either /%postname%/ or %category%/%postname%/  – no if you have a small blog go with the flat structure.  If you have a large blog I recommend a hierarchical structure. I recommend using a plugin called ‘top level categories’ if you have a hierarchical structure.

Permalinks Typepad to Wordpress - I like using categories as it brings more keywords in the url

5. Get images from Tyepad – Go do download.com and download a program called HTTrack, with this you can download your entire site for backup or at least the images from Typepad before you make your move.

6. Set up an images directory – on your server where you will keep all you iamges that you bring to Wordpress from Typepad.  Therefore, mydomain.com/images/ might be your directory. I recommend doing your images by hand. I know people will complain – but most people do not have SEO images.  Your images – including the file-name-of-the-image.jpg the ‘alt tag’ and the Caption shoud be SEOed – that is make is user or reader valuable.  Chances are if you stated on Typepad you did not do this as it was your first real blog.  Here if golden opportunity to make this right. I also resizes all my images before I move it to Wordpress from Typepad.  I use paint.net

7. Move from a Typepad  blog to Wordpress – Next export all your Typepad posts. Go to your Wordpress control panel under ‘tools’ – ‘import’ you can import your Typepad blog. You can glance at this documentation for movable type import

 Typepad to Wordpress conversion import function

That is it.  Now there will be a  lot of clean up and testing of course. However, all the functionality is built into Wordpress already.  The only real issue is the Typepad redirect. Nothing complicated.  I could do it in less then an hour.

If your Typepad blog is small I recommend you simply copy and paste it over to Wordpress.  I would say this is try for anything less then 200 posts. This is because you get to fix everything in your old posts.

Tyepad redirect to your Wordpress blog

This is the only trick.  It is the only thing that counts.  The above is basically setting up a Wordpress blog.  You will need to redirect with a 301 your juice to your new Wordpress blog.

Rather than repeat what others have written here are some external guides for the move that describe the redirection.

Redirection from Typepad to Wordpress and other issues:

Typepad to Wordpress redirection solved

Migration to Wordpress from Typepad

Great detail in this Move Typepad to Wordpress guide

Let me know if you have any question on your conversion.

 Original Source:
http://www.wordpress-seo.org/blog/typepad-to-wordpress/