I have a website that sells piano sheet music. How do I lower the bounce rate for the website?

Hello! This is a great question, my name is Humberto Valle, I'm a content and marketing strategist for www.Unthink.me. Our small agency bring big business tools to small growing companies. Your question is related to SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. The reason why you don't see your company name or website pages come up on a Google search is because your website is most likely very new and Google has not indexed it. With that said, even if your site is older and you have many pages and good SEO, its never a good idea to search for your company or website off your own browser like you would search other things because you are going to get skewed results on the Google Search. One of the things you can do to test how you rank without altering the results from searching on your own IP address is by opening a Google Incognito window or going to third party tools to test your SEO. Now, your question was how to get Google to show your site and the answer is simple, you have to index it. 1) Try submitting your website here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?continue=/addurl&pli=1 2) Register your business with the over 80 different major indexing sites out there such as Yelp, Yellow pages, white pages, bing, apple, etc. The more you register the most links Google will have to find your website as it's scanning others. If they all have the exact same information then over some time Google will begin to associate your website page with those particular keywords based on the region that you serve based on how Google categorizes your particular industry. For example, a software development company will have different region categorization and SEO than a local pizzeria. 3) Insert the right tags and code snippets on your website so that Google can best validate and read your website, then index it better. Google does not see or care how your website looks to other humans, can't see what a picture looks like so you have to tell it, same thing with phone number or address on a certain page or certain of a website, just because you wrote it and maybe have it linking to a map it doesn't mean Google knows is an address, but properly tagging the code of the site will help google know what each part of the site is and what's it for and the hierarchy of each page and each section. 4) Improve/create content for your website, when people visit your website and they leave within the first few seconds or minutes is BAD. Really bad. Imagine if someone was ranking stores in a mall based on how many people walked in and immediately walked out because they didn't see anything of interest in that store and left right away. That's what Google is doing, but the more people spend time on your site, the more Google rewards you because they are in the business of giving us good search results - they show relevant websites that are being browsed around by new visitors and returning visitors. 5) Improve/create your funnel system, goes hand in hand with the time spent on the site. The more pages a new visitor clicks through the better for your ranking. 6) Make good use of H1, H2, H3, etc throughout your page and your blog posts. 7) Make sure each page has its appropriate meta data and social media descriptions clearly describing the page content intent. 8) Leverage social media, although no business should really be in all social media you should definitely secure each profile and stick to those with a follow syntax. Facebook and instagram for example are no follow which means all your content there will not be indexed by Google, but sites like Twitter, Linkedin, Google Plus and Youtube are follow. 9) Consider registering for a paid membership with BBB, Google and BBB partnered to provide better ranking to its members. This is easier to achieve in certain cities where you may not be competing against many other SEO savvy companies. But for example, in a city like El Paso Texas - companies with a BBB registrations tend to rank better than others with average SEO (all else being equal). 10) DO ALL THIS WHILE KEEPING CONSISTENT WITH ONLY A HANDFUL OF POTENTIALLY PROFITING SEO KEYWORDS OR LONG TAIL WORDS (SEARCH SENTENCES). No body can rank high for everything, but you can rank high for certain keywords. Some agencies like ours use some expensive tools to find out the best keywords and SEO plans companies are implementing and could help you find the right keywords for your market. Either way, even if you were to pick keywords are random on your own - stick to no more than 5 and make sure to alternate them on your posts, pages, headline titles, meta data, etc. The more you have the more you will rank for those keywords or longtails. SEO and appearing on Google results is a constantly evolving game of chasing the cat's tail. Google keeps improving and changing their algorithm to protect themselves and stay with the times which is why is always recommended that you avoid paying to those click farm, link building services that 'guarantee' 1st page ranking in a month or two because all they do is spam the internet with fake profiles everywhere with your link included, they work for a bit but then they don't forcing you to keep paying for such service and when you stop paying it all goes away VS the way I just described above - well, that investment stays for ever building on itself. SEO is not optional if you are planning on ever depending even a little on online sales you need to have SEO. Its like opening a business in a very busy street but thinking a sign with states your product and "open" is optional. How are people supposed to know you're there and stumble onto your products even by accident much less intentionally? I hope I was helpful and provided you with enough good clarity to help you take the next steps in your business. If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to reach out to me. If you are interested in SEO services, we offer a broad range of services and can accommodate most budgets. Continue learning about DIY SEO on our blog at http://blog.unthink.me/100-incredibly-easy-ways-to-have-better-seo

If you are going to use Social Media Marketing. I would recommend you create a Pinterest wall of your work and back link them to your site. Try that.

Kudos to you for seeing the value in great copy. I love that you mentioned 37signals, which is an organization that's made copywriting part of almost everyone's jobs (or so they've shared on their blog). MailChimp and Zendesk are two others that people often point to re: great copy that builds a brand and differentiates; Groupon is another awesome example of really, really tonal copy that people actually read (which is more than half the battle). MailChimp has in-house copywriters, including Kate Kiefer (https://twitter.com/katekiefer), and so does Groupon. I'm not sure who writes for Dropbox or Zendesk, though searching companies on LinkedIn can often reveal little-known in-house geniuses. The startups you mention have a certain style and tone that I have to say is different from what you'll normally get with a "direct response" copywriter, though by all means check out the link David Berman submitted to you because you never know. I recommend that, to achieve the slightly funky, funny-ish copy you're looking for, you seek out a conversion-focused copywriter with a creative and UX background. You need someone who's totally at ease adopting a new voice / tone and using it appropriately across your site and in your emails; less experienced copywriters might be heavy-handed with the tone, which often gets in the way of the user experience (e.g., button copy that's tonal can lead to confusion). Be careful, of course, not to push your writer to be exceptionally creative -- because a little touch of tone goes a loooong way for busy, scanning eyes. Here are some great freelance copywriters you could consider: http://copyhackers.com/freelance-copywriters-for-hire/ The link to Neville's Kopywriting peeps is also great. Before hiring, ask to see a portfolio or get a) links to websites they've written and b) a zip of emails they've written; if a writer is accepting clients, they'll usually showcase their work on their website. Check out their blog and tweets to see if their voice comes through in their own writing. Don't hire bloggers or content creators for a job a copywriter should do. Don't hire print copywriters for web work unless they do both. And when you find a great copywriter, trust them... and don't let them go - because 10 bucks says, they're in demand or about to be.

I wouldn't get into the game of charging per word/hour. You don't want to commoditize yourself. I suggest looking into value-based fees. Here's a good place to start. http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/2013/06/12/breakingthetimebarrier/

Go for Wordpress initially. -- Custom website will delay your launch plans considering all factors. -- Wordpress can be used to meet your requirements from day 1. -- Once you have enough visitors and decided the revenue model + business objective plan for a customized website to be developed from scratch.