As you said, placing something with 'Perl' such as "Perlmonks" in the title would help (so would links), but I don't think Search Engine rankings are that important.

Most members (especially the ones that stick around and contribute) don't look for these types of sites in a search engine. It's usually either recommended to them or they find it from a link in some other perl-related publication (articles, Learning Perl, etc.)

Not that there's anything wrong with having a good search engine ranking (or is there?), I just don't think it's as important as most people make it out to be.