Having some problems with understanding how to properly use anchor text for my keywords' better rankings. Please help!

[kirupa]

Hello,

Last week I did some work on my website's inner pages linking and some of my highly ranking keywords fell down as a result. I guess I did something wrong, please help me figure out what exactly was wrong!

Here is the example of what I did.  I put a link to the page that ranks for 'Thermador repair Brentwood' here: http://www.ifixappliancesla.com/blog/2016/09/12/appliance-repair-brentwood/

I put exactly same anchor text, 'Thermador repair Brentwood'.

For my blog posts, I use Yoast plugin, so when adding the link, I received the message "You are linking to another page with the focus word you want this page rank for. Consider changing that if you truly want this page to rank." While this one's ranking, 'Thermador repair Brentwood', didn't fall down, others did.

Could you please confirm if my understanding is right and I'd better not use the same keywords on two or more pages? If yes, what is the best practice for linking to the pages that are not in the main menu? Let's say, I decided to do blog posts for the areas my appliance repair company serves and to optimize those pages for respective keywords. So, I have pages like "Appliance Repair Service in Brentwood" (which is optimized for "appliance repair brentwood" keyword), "Appliance Repair Service in Beverly Hills" ("appliance repair beverly hills" keyword), etc. I thought that the best way to link to them is to put the same anchor texts: "appliance repair beverly hills", etc. But it looks like the best way would be to use the anchor texts like "Beverly Hills", "appliance servicemen in Beverly Hills". Please tell me if I am right? Any explanation, advise or referral would be much appreciated!

Thank you!