Inactive Keywords - Now What?

Campaigns crushed by Google's early April minimum bid rollout. Advice?

[pdivi]

Like many of you, I was greatly affected by Google's rollout of (apparently) new minimum bid criteria in early April. About half of my keywords were deactivated and minimum bids were set just above my profit threshold in most cases. In other words, were I to reactivate the kewords, I'd lose lots of money.

I have spoken to my Google account manager several times, and she indicates that the problem is with our "landing page quality", though after reviewing our landing pages, she didn't have any ideas for fixing. By her admission, the landing pages are very relevant to the keywords. CTR is very high, keywords have been running for 2-3 years, so there's really not a clear course of action on how I can get back on track.

I've seen a couple people on this board mention that their CPCs on deactivated keywords have now returned to pre-April levels. Was that AFTER accepting Google's minimum bid, or did the keywords just automatically get reactivated? I'm wondering whether I should take the plunge and accept the minimum bids, and lose money in the short-term in hopes things will go back to normal long-term.

Any advice? Any other ideas?

[netmeg]

Try accepting the minimum bids on just a few keywords - ones that you really think have a relevant landing page - and see what happens. If it looks like after a day or two you're gaining on your ideal CPC, then maybe add a few more.