Whitey - 8:52 am on Sep 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Overall traffic is way up

Well i think you're on the road to a great recovery.

What did you do differently to optimize for the keywords/s that tanked? or, put it another way, what exactly did you de optimize.

I'm wondering if you're talking about a trophy keyword ie a highly competitive keyword/s that need a lot of support [ pre Penguin ].

Maybe you went just a little too hard on the deoptimization for that keyword - have you thought of reversing a little of what you did to see what happens to the keyword.