more keywords more competition

is it easier to position for a single keyword than a whole phrase

[whatson]

This month some of my customers' sites lost positions dramatically for their main keyword phrase, but the positions increased a lot for the some of the single keywords. For example last month one of customer's was in the top 10 for online degrees, they are now in the 60s, however they are in the top 20 for degrees.
This doesnt make sense, why would it happen. These keywords are far more competive and they werent even optimized for them

Has anyone else experienced this?

[Marcia]

whatson, some people were reporting something changing with multiple word phrases, especially several mentioned it happening when it included the location. I've seen it with location, it's very different.

I haven't noticed much mentioned with single keywords, which I don't generally consider worth the effort to try for, but on one little site I've noticed a LOT of referrals for the main single keyword, which has never happened before. When looking, I find that it moved up to #16 out of almost a million and a half. It hasn't lost position for the primary two word phrase though, in fact it moved to #1, which I really attributed to other sites slipping down and some inbound links added, most of which are low PR. It's definitely not fancy, and no changes have been made except to add two pages to the site for outbound links.

[Beachboy]

Not seeing that with the categories I deal with.

[fathom]

One conclusion "theory" that has circulated is that internal linking structures have dropped in weight.

On personally managed web sites -- all pages are PR4 or above but a good chunk have dropped as backlinks.

SERP's (for what I checked) did manage the remain the same (and some slightly better) and traffic increased accordingly.

It is probably best to wait for a second update to make any real conclusions... and dramatic changes.