Have you tried buying pay per click (PPC) ads on Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft but weren't happy with the results? Did you wind up spending money without seeing an increase in sales or inquiries from your contact page?

If so, you're not alone. It's not unusual for businesses that try online advertising for the first time to be disappointed with the results. As a result, they either blame the service for sending "junk" traffic, or decide after an initial trial that advertising online just doesn't work for them.

There are news stories from time to time about pay-per-click fraud, however, from what I've seen, the biggest reasons small businesses are dissatisfied with PPC ad campaigns is that they don't take the time to find out what makes online advertising campaigns work and how to avoid attracting clicks from people who don't make good sales prospects.

Learning how to bid on and benefit from search engine advertising takes time and practice. But the "practice" doesn't have to break your budget if you keep these suggestions in mind:

Read the instructions before you put your money on the line. Every online pay per click advertising system has instructions available online. Read the instructions and be sure you understand them before you make any advertisements live.

Understand the importance of keywords and key phrases. (Keywords and key phrases are the words and phrases people type into search engines when they are looking for information.) If you sell fish to pet stores you're going to want to use different key phrases than a company that sells fish to restaurants.

Use the keyword suggestion tools search engine PPC services offer to help you find the best keywords for your site. But, be choosy. Don’t blindly accept every keyword they suggest.

Learn to use negative keywords. Negative keywords are words you don't want your ads to show up for. For instance, if you are photographer who sells prints of your work online, you would not want to pay for clicks by people searching for free photos. So you'd probably want to use free as a negative keyword.

When you first set up your ads, avoid advertising on the "content networks." (The content networks are privately owned sites that publish search engine pay per click ads and get paid when visitors to their site click on the ads.) Once your ads work well for you in the search engines, then you can go back and consider including the content networks in your ad buy.

Watch the geographic area. If you don't want to sell nationally, or can't sell nationally or internationally, don't advertise nationally or internationally. You don't want to pay for clicks from someone from Nebraska looking for landscaping services when your company only services a handful of towns in Massachusetts.

When you first set up your ad campaigns, limit your keywords to phrase matches and exact matches and be specific. Instead of using "glasses" as a keyword to reach people interested in buying something to drink out of, use "drinking glasses" or "commercial glassware." Again, once you get the hang on buying pay per click ads, then you can test broad match keywords and more generic keywords.

There's much, much more to learn about buying PPC ads. But the tips above, if followed, should help you get started without wasting a lot of money on clicks from prospects who are looking for something a bit different from what you sell.

More: 3 Common Pay-Per-Click Mistakes

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