Import Content From Google Docs to WordPress

Many agencies and ecommerce businesses engaged in content creation share a common pain point: wasted time and effort copying content from Google Docs to WordPress editor, losing formatting, and then having to manually clean up the messy HTML afterward. 

WordPress automation offers a fix for this problem, allowing you to create a direct, seamless Google Docs-to-WordPress workflow. This solution provides speed, consistency, and reduced friction in your publishing process. 

This article explains the need for automation in content publishing, compares the best tools available, and provides a guide for achieving an efficient, friction-free workflow when importing content from Google Docs to WordPress.

Pressable supports making your work easier through automation, offering a variety of features including automated WordPress updates, backups, failover.

Manual Copy-Paste Slows Your Workflow

Many problems arise when manually copying and pasting your site’s content.

• Messy Formatting: Google Docs include hidden code and inline styling that corrupts the WordPress editor, leading to inconsistent fonts, spacing, and broken links.
• Image Handling: Images are never pasted directly. They have to be manually downloaded, uploaded to your media library, and then re-inserted.
• Metadata Management: Inefficient manual entry of SEO titles, meta descriptions, and featured images is required for every post.
• Workflow Bottlenecks: Handoffs are slow between writers/editors and the person responsible for final publishing.

All of these problems can be eliminated with a dedicated WordPress automation tool that can interpret the content’s structure (such as headings and lists) directly.

You have a number of tools and approaches available to assist with importing your content from Google Docs to WordPress.

Dedicated WordPress Plugins

• Wordable: This popular solution offers one-click import, automatic image optimization and upload, and metadata handling for SEO fields.
• Mammoth .docx Converter: This simple tool is designed for converting Word documents. While it has limited capabilities, it can handle cleaned-up Google Docs exports.

SaaS Automation Platforms

• Zapier or Make (formerly Integromat): Both of these platforms connect Google Drive ( to the WordPress REST API. The trigger can be a new file or file status change, while the associated action can be creating a post. Either of these options is good for teams that need to connect the import step to other actions (such as notifying Slack or updating a project management board). Among the array of WordPress automation options, these platforms require the most technical setup.

The Guttenberg Advantage

This WordPress block-based editor replaced the Classic Editor. It helps create cleaner HTML and makes the import process less painful when it is done manually.

Manual Cleanup Method

For many reasons, you may not be ready to commit to a plugin or a SaaS and have to rely on a manual process. If this applies to you, the best manual workflow is pasting the content into a plain text editor (Notepad, for example) first to strip formatting, and then pasting the content into WordPress.

Looking beyond content management, Pressable can help guide you toward other WordPress automations to help operate your site more efficiently.

Key Steps in Your Automated Content Workflow

• Ready: Change the Google Doc content status (or use a dedicated button, like in Wordable) to signal that the content is approved and ready for conversion.
• Draft: Create and edit your content entirely within Google Docs.
• Automate: Your chosen WordPress automation tool, whether plugin or Saas) runs, converting the structure of your content into clean Gutenberg blocks.
• Review: The editor looks over the imported content on the WordPress staging site, adds the featured image to go along with the content, and then hits publish.

Following this simple automated process reduces your publishing time from 15-20 minutes to less than five minutes per post.

Best Practices for Successful Google Docs Imports

• Use Proper Heading Tags: In Google Docs, structure your content with correct tags like H2, H2, etc. Don’t rely on bold fonts only. Automation tools rely on these tags.
• Compress Images Prior to Upload: Even if your automation tool handles image uploads, optimize the files beforehand for better site performance.
• Clean Up Tables: Tables in your content are notorious for breaking layouts. Closely review and structure them when developing your content.
• Test on Staging: Run your import on a staging or development site before pushing content live on your website to catch last-minute errors and reduce the amount of time-consuming fixing afterward.
• Limit Excessive Styling: Avoid exotic fonts, colors, or heavy inline styling of your content in the original Google Doc. This helps you avoid inconsistent formatting in your content and reduces HTML bloat on your pages.

Improving Your Content Management Process for a Better Customer Experience

Integrating WordPress automation with Google Docs offers an effective way to eliminate the most frustrating bottleneck in your website content management process. Shifting from a manual copy-pasted approach to an automated system is an essential change for businesses and agencies aiming for greater scale and efficiency. 

Take time to determine whether a plugin or a SaaS solution is the best fit for your content workflow. Soon enough, you will be saving hours of valuable time every month and delivering a better content experience to your customers.

Pressable Is Your Automation Partner

If your business is looking to automate for greater scalability and growth, choosing Pressable as your hosting provider is the best place to start. Pressable helps get more done with less busywork, offering a variety of automation features including automated WordPress updates, backups, failover. We also offer auto-scaling and free CDN to meet your website’s growing traffic needs. 

Pressable—part of the Automattic family that also includes WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, and WooCommerce—is staffed by WordPress experts with the skills and knowledge to effectively manage your WordPress site. If you’re thinking about switching to managed WordPress hosting, schedule a demo to see how Pressable can support your continued optimization and growth.