One of my golden keywords (single-worded keyword) was consistently ranking at no. 2 (below wikipedia) for the longest time.
That particular keyword landed me a few big contracts and I was happy. My clients were happy.
The birds were chirping and flowers were blooming... until 3 days ago, a new dude with a 5 month old domain dethroned and banished me
to - 50!!


Did a quick research and found something that might help
1. That new website is just 5 months old.
2. Has very little quality backlinks, most of them coming from directories, forum profiles and comments.
3. What dude has is content. Well written articles, over 300 of them with very strong local references.
4. My site is 99% whitehat, most backlinks coming in from legit websites. Content-wise, pretty strong but slowed down lately
5. My other keywords started improving (from > 20 to Top 10)
As I'm typing this, my golden keyword started dancing to Page 2.
I'm guessing this is probably temporary since (2) and (3) is gonna cancel out each other soon. It's either that or I'm just trying to make myself happy.