title becomes title tag, and proper h1 tag.
meta keywords and description tag is noise for most engine. you want to stay away from those, as they reduce the keyword density of the page.
the theme validates as html4, and white spaces are kept to an absolute minimum.
phrases/keywords that become links is done via a tagging plugin.
name of the article in the footer is useless, especially for what you want to do with it. best I know, engines ignore links to the same page. link to home is a matter of adding it via the config.php, but it’s not much use either.
pings are a WP problem, not a theme problem.
putting the site name before the title damages your ranking.
the point in the end being: there’s several years of SEO experience in that theme; better take it than leave it.