One keyword has dropped, everything else is ok, why?

[Bondara]

Ok so this is what I got,

1 page ranks for about 5 different terms, all closely matching for example: Flower Pots, Flower Pot, Cheap Flower Pots, Buy Flower Pots.

Flower Pot and Flower Pots are on page 2.

Flower Pot stays where it is BUT Flower Pots drops out the rankings completely after being there for years.

Could a blast of exact match anchor text at the term Flower Pots cause this?

I would have thought the page would have been zapped rather then just one keyword.

Any ideas?

[MashBonigala]

Yes, I would say that a sharp increase in exact match anchor text links would drop that keywords from the SERPS. Google is getting better at fine tuning the dops. Instead of dropping the entire page, I have also seen such drops for one of my own websites.

Another possible cause could also be heavy internal anchor text match for that keyword. Have you heavily added that anchor text internally too?

[Bondara]

Nope just off-site activity.

So how would you recommend bringing it back? im inclined to try and remove the heavy anchor text and replace it with mixed anchor from higher auth sites, but even then im not sure if Google have marked it and there is no coming back.

[MashBonigala]

Yes, you must most definitely remove the exact match anchor text and diversify the keywords. I would suggest going for quite a higher percentage of generic non-anchor texts such as "click here" etc.

[Robert_G]

Yep, diversify you anchor and pray for the best.