Does Google penalize sites by keyword?

[nipear2000]

Hello everyone,
I've noticed something interesting on one of my sites. It appears that google is penalizing our site for a particular keyword. For the most competitive keywords in our category we are consistently top 5. But for 1 semi-competitive keyword (say wedding widget) we are not even in the top 300. But if we add something like green wedding widget we are top 3 for almost every possible 3-word string containing 'wedding widget'. Our site is optimized for 'wedding widget' like any other keyword and the competition is not very strong here.

My only guess is that Google is penalizing us for 'wedding widget'. The thing is we have several links pointing to us with 'wedding widget' in the link text. The only problem is they point to a very outdated .html page that no longer exists and is redirected to our new dynamic page. I've emailed the 2 sites and nobody is home. This keyword has a very high conversion rate (with Overture) and I'd like to get back up to the top 10. Any ideas???

[Brett_Tabke]

I've seen this phenom alot. I don't think it is any kind of penalty. It just reflects the fact, that the power phrase in that category is so competitive. It takes that much more pr to get into that phrases category. It will always be easier to rank well under more keywords.

It's easy to hit top ten under "blue green widgets" than it will be to hit "green widgets". In some keywords the difference can be from pr3 to pr7 or higher.

[MHes]

Hi
How about tuning up that old .html page and put lots of internal links from other pages within your site pointing to that page... thus it will get maximum pr available?