Site is not ranking for a particular keyword !!

[Personnel_Concept]

One of my site is ranking for all the main keywords except one.

This keyword is just a variant of those keywords which are all ranking in top 10 (page 1) in Google.

Why is it happening? Does Google punishes site for one keyword.

I know competition of keyword matters but other keywords with similar competition are ranking.

And even the site is very well optimized for this keyword (titles and site copy without any stuffing)

Any Solutions ?

[Personnel_Concept]

Its a long story, I made few ordinary links then site dropped so had to remove them. After that I made some decent links. Things were still same. I made one good blog link and the site rankings suddenly started rising and for some reason blog was removed and site ranking dropped again.

[Personnel_Concept]

yeah Its a very tricky situation. It definitely needs more work than other similar sites.

[TylerReardon]

If similar keywords are ranking and this one keyword is not, it most likely is not penalization by Google for that keyword. The problem you're most likely experiencing is a poor link portfolio for the keyword. Exact match anchor text can still be very useful today.

Try obtaining some .edu or .gov links for the keyword if at all possible. Social shares with the link and keyword in the text will also be very important to seeing a ranking increase for this keyword.

Google can be very strange sometimes but it doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong, it just means you have to work harder!

[DavidKonigsberg]

Check your exact match anchor links for your site could be that word was overly used causing a penalty on it.

[Unity]

Whats your linking profile like for this other keyword?