Keyword not ranking but keyword within a phrase is?

[One2OneDigital]

Hi Guys,

Google is not indexing the keyword ‘e liquid’ for www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid and it's driving me insane. I cannot understand why, can anyone please shed any light!

-On page we have used variations e liquid, e-liquid, eliquid.

-The e-liquid product pages are canonicaled to www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid.

-3 other pages regarding e liquid were 301 redirected to the page passing good authority. I did this as I believed these pages conflicted as they seemed to target e-liquid.

-‘e-liquid’ is being used as an anchor throughout the website pointing to www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid.

-The ‘e liquid’ page has generally good authority PA 22, DA26.

-The website has good anchor text linking to the site, all relative and e liquid related, along with brand links.

Currently the keyword ‘e liquid’ brings up the home page www.cloudstix.com ranked 100+. What’s strange is the other terms relating to 'e liquid' bring up www.cloudstix.com/e-liquid for example: ‘e liquid uk’ ‘the best e liquid’ and ‘e liquid cloudstix’.

Any ideas on what the problem may be. Would appreciate any advice on this.

Thanks guys!

Liam

[RyanPurkey]

Hi Liam. You might be over optimizing for the term with your on page work. I'd pull it back. Get rid of the meta keyword for "E-Liquid" and take a look at where you could be over doing it with your internal linking. The copy of "the best e-liquid..." is heavily repetitive.  Didn't bother taking a look at your back link profile around this exact phrase, but you'll know if you've been over doing it on that too.

[Linda-Vassily]

This question appears twice, with answers under both. I do not know whether this can be consolidated?

[KeriMorgret]

Locking thread, as duplicate question with more answers is available at http://moz.com/community/q/keyword-not-ranking-but-keyword-within-a-phrase-is-2