I don't think you can say that Steemit isn't placed well. If you haven't seen specific results from steemit then maybe that's because very few are doing SEO to be indexed well. If everyone did it then we might see a different story. Or if there were better tools for us to use for SEO that would make it even easier.
I also checked out the domain on MOZ. It has a domain authority of 80, 35.7k linking domains, 93.2% external links are follow and 99.2% of internal links are follow.
Food for thought anyway to discuss the chicken and the egg nature of SEO here.
That's a good point. It could be that the structure and lack of better tools (like they have in WordPress) makes it difficult to compete with the open Internet. But that's kind of what I meant when I said SteemIt itself isn't placed well. Rather than everyone on SteemIt being bad/lazy/apathetic at SEO, it could be that we're already handicapped by the SteemIt environment or Google's perception of it.
That said, I ran a few more tests by taking older titles that don't have the SteemIt keyword and put them, verbatim, in Google. Several did indeed appear #1, but some of course didn't. I'll keep my eyes open when I do research and reserve judgment until more data is in. :)
In either case, I really love the Steemit concept and the community here. I've only been here a few days, but my impression is already quite favorable. :)