I think we may always have some issues with SEO ranking @sidwrites. Just like we might always have a modest Alexa ranking... because this is a decentralized community. The content isn't where the blockchain resides... and the blockchain is actually accessed by dozens of dApps, each with their own SEO and ranking. PeakD isn't the same as Hive.blog isn't the same as 3Speak isn't the same as ESteem, etc.
In this moment, the only workaround I can immediately come up with would be for ALL our dApp developers to get together and agree to automatically append "published on the Hive blockchain, visit Hive.io" as a standardized footer across ALL content on ALL dApps... thereby putting the Hive.io domain "out there" many thousands of times.
This is a lovely suggestion. Upvoting for transparency. And yes, ranking of dozens of dApps will be different. I do remember, back in those days, Steemit was ranking really high. Not sure how or why.
It also has to do with the technical aspect - and not merely onsite optimization. Again, like you said, to get all the dApp devs together and get them to discuss would be perfect to bump up the rankings.
And then, with time, we can monitor and see what's next.