How to Make Older SaaS Blog Posts Discoverable

Trace the route to an older post

Pick a published post that no longer appears on the first blog page. Open the public blog archive and record every page and action needed to reach it. Note whether each move uses a visible link with a destination URL or depends on a button, a scroll event, or a filter. Also open the post itself: a working article URL does not establish that the archive links to it. Google recommends that pages be reachable through crawlable links from other findable pages.

For a useful spot check, choose posts from an early, a middle, and the oldest available archive page—not just the newest entries. Record the starting archive URL, each subsequent archive URL, the article URL, and where the chain stops if it fails. That gives the site owner a specific missing link to fix instead of an undifferentiated list of old articles.

Use linked pages, even if readers see “Load more”

For an archive that spans several screens, linked pagination is the dependable discovery path. Give each archive page its own URL and link each page to the next using an <a href> link. Google’s pagination guidance explicitly includes blog-post lists, recommends distinct URLs and sequential links, and says each paginated page should have its own canonical URL rather than pointing every page’s canonical to page one.

A load-more-only archive may feel smoother to a visitor, but a button that reveals more titles without exposing linked page URLs is not a reliable route for crawlers. You do not have to remove the interaction: keep it if it suits readers, while ensuring the later chunks also have URLs that load directly and can be reached through links. For incrementally loaded content, Google recommends persistent URLs for individual chunks and sequential links between them.

Consider a fictional archive with an older article at /blog/customer-onboarding-mistakes. The site currently reveals that title only after two clicks on “Load more.” The intended linked route is /blog → /blog?page=2 → /blog?page=3 → /blog/customer-onboarding-mistakes. Page two needs a link to page three, and page three needs a link to the article. The example URLs are illustrative; use the URL pattern your site actually serves. The resulting action is to make those archive pages and links available, not to republish the article.

Release the links, then test the public route

Before release, prepare the later archive-page routes, the next-page links, and the article links shown on those pages. Make the destination pages available before linking to them if your changes cannot be deployed together. An anchor needs a real href destination: Google says it cannot reliably extract navigation URLs from anchors without href or from elements that navigate only through script events.

After deployment, start at the public blog URL and follow the route you recorded. Open a later archive URL directly in a fresh browser tab; confirm it displays its share of posts without first clicking through earlier pages. Follow its next-page link and an older article link, and check that the article loads. Inspect the rendered links if navigation appears to work only through JavaScript. Repeat for the middle and oldest pages from your audit, including the final page where there should be no link to a nonexistent successor.

Treat a sitemap as a supplement, not evidence that this archive route works. The distinction also matters for content produced with Ranks: Ranks says published articles live on your own blog, and its product reference distinguishes a generated draft from a live deployment. Check the public article URL and its inbound archive link after publishing; the site owner needs to maintain the archive navigation as the collection grows.

Fix the archive path, not a different problem

If the later archive page is reachable but the article link is absent, add that link where the post belongs in the archive. If the link exists but its destination fails, fix the article page or its URL instead. For changed article addresses, use the separate blog URL migration guide. For choosing links from articles to product pages, use the article-to-product linking guide. Neither task replaces a navigable archive.