If you maintain a blog on your website, the following may be a familiar scenario: You think of a subject you think may be useful to your readers. You put hours and hours of work into writing a carefully-crafted blog post. But when you put it up on your site, it doesn’t get anywhere near the traffic you were hoping for. But before you write it off as a total loss, realize that there are ways that these old posts can benefit you.

The great thing about blogging is that your posts can grow with you and continue to build up your readership as the years go on. Here are 4 things you can do to improve your old blogs.

Keep the content updated – Sometimes the main idea of an article can remain relevant months, or even years, after you’ve published it. However, you may have to edit sections of it remain stay in tune with today’s events. Revisiting your old posts weeks or months later can also help you gain a new perspective on the content.

Refresh the images and meta data – Sometimes, just performing small tweaks on potentially-outdated information can make a big difference. Adjust your meta descriptions and title tags to include your keywords if they don’t already. If your images are small or low-quality, search stock image sites for bigger, bolder pictures. Pinterest has become a huge player in web-sharing, so if your post is relevant to that platform (e.g. a how-to article), make sure to get it on there.

Use social media – These days, social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ move so quickly, that many of your followers may have missed your post when you shared it the first time. If you do repost an old post, try not to bring attention to the date, as this could turn your reader off.

Link to your old posts in your new posts – If you write a new post that somehow relates to an old one, inserting a quick hyperlink can be a great way to encourage renewed interest in blog posts of years past.

Don’t let the blog posts you put so much effort into waste away in the back-end of your website when you can make all your creative efforts, past and present, work for you.