Ask/Propose HN: What to Do with Just Acquired Local Business Directory?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3454753

by meeeu • 15 years ago

2 4 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hi guys I just acquired a friend's local business listings website

http://www.queensmetro.com/

It's a local website for Queens, New York. However, I am a California kid who has only been to NY once and as far as I know never been to Queens. My friend has been developing this space for a little over a year but he will be moving to Asia and I helped him out by acquiring it.

I would like some opinions on how this site can be pivoted towards a broader audience since it basically functions like a local Yelp site. And if anyone from New York area specially Queens would give some good inputs on the potential of this website it would be much appreciated.

Personally, I would like to meet a hacker from Queens area who would like to co-develop this site further for a mass appeal. I know it has potentials and my friend obviously worked hard on it. It just need a little bit more elbow grease. Please contact me if you're interested.

Thanks for reading!

sagacity• 15 years ago

Clickable: http://www.queensmetro.com/

Looks quite nicely done already. One quick suggestion: You might want to look into some basic SEO for the site. A few pages I browsed all seem to have the same Title tag - I think it'll certainly boost (targeted) traffic if you customise just the title tag of each page.

HTH and all the best moving forward.

JayNeely2• 15 years ago

Why are you looking for someone in Queens if you're in California, and you're trying to pivot to a broader audience?

The site's a mess. I'm sure your friend worked hard on it, but this is nowhere near being able to compete with Yelp, even locally.

I'd bet most of the traffic is coming through the Guides and Resources section of the site. The business directory portion is crap. Your assets are content and domain history, which are providing search traffic.

My advice would be to move business listings to the back, move content to the front, hire writers to create more local content, and monetize through local affiliates.

If my assumptions are off, please post some Google analytics data so we can see a more accurate picture of what you're working with.

meeeu• 15 years ago

Hi JN, thanks for your inputs. I do have some GA data that I would like to share with you via email if you have sometime to leave me some more valuable feedback.

JayNeely2• 15 years ago

Sure thing. jay [.dot.] neely [@at@] SocialStrategist [.dot.] com

Ask/Propose HN: What to Do with Just Acquired Local Business Directory?

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