Should I treat this as a penalty or not?

[Herman]

My website was penalized and slips from # 5 to # 55 at the position of search engine Google.
However, this occurred only by a specific word key.
I should treat this as a penalty or not?
If it is a penalty, penalty limits it only to a particular keyword?

[Garry]

Wow that is a LOT of decline. I am not an expert but I think it can be punished for it. Just based on what I hear from people, yes I think you could. I believe you can still recover from this.

[Craig]

Perhaps you should check it whether it is because of plenty or something else? then you can take some remedial action accordingly.

[Norman]

Hey man! Here are my two cents on that one ...

I had a client with the same problem, because the texts / keywords are used only when an anchor some of the links were made.

You can still save by using varying anchor text keyword linking to your site. Use keywords long tail - and not have to be consecutive. Just make sure your key target is in the anchor texts.

And also use the relevant content with your keywords, hope this makes sense for you.

[Frederick]

Generally Google is just place your website where it should be according to the latest algorithm. 1 keyword fall does not mean you got penalized. Pena usually occurs for all keywords that fall rankings at once.

I have a client who was affected by this past July. and recovery took about 3-4 weeks. (1 is not only keywords, but 4 main keywords)

I also agree with Sam. you should diversify your anchor text and where it will build backlinks.

You should try to build links on high PageRank blogs that is not less than PR3. the higher, the better, and not just PR PR blog but the exact page.