Neil Lemons’ Blog

When Andrew Goodman talks about AdWords I listen. I read his book back in the summer of 2006 and my eyes were opened to many AdWords techniques as well as many direct response advertising principles in which I had forgotten. I look back at my first attempts at Overture in 2005 and realize how much has changed and how much I have learned.

In the following article Goodman gives some sage advice on what to do with when you inherit a bad AdWords account. This quote seems to appropriately reflect his point..

“No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back.” -Turkish Proverb

Individual account history combined with Google’s own historical assessment of keyword success gathered from advertisers over the last seven years (since 2001) plays a role in AdWords Quality Score. So does those crucial first 1000 impressions for getting a good click through rate.

So what do you do when your account bombs or you inherit one with bad set up/history? Start over with a new account or you will be facing an uphill battle for a long time, and possibly forever. Start by creating tight adgroups and bidding higher than you normally would in order to obtain a high Quality Score. Don’t expect the account to instantly pay for itself the first week or even month. If you follow the path of the diligent and knowledgeable you will outlast the lazy and uninformed and eventually be rolling in ROI bliss.

Read the rest of Goodman’s commentary on his Monday Search Engine Land column.

I’ve heard this advice before from two other Gurus whom I follow.
Micheal Reining of MindValleyLabs.com in his The Coming AdWords War ebook.
SEOChat Forum posts by the legendary GarytheScubaGuy.

Edit:
Jon Rognerud from Entrepreneur.com also mentioned this technique today.