I'd be interested in hearing other people's strategies as well.
Just yesterday I was looking for a timeline I thought I had created for the history of railroads in my area. A search on railroad failed because it was actually in a note about my beloved rail-to-trail network. Oddly, the word railroad appears nowhere in the timeline or the title of the note. Since railroads isn't a major focus of mine I didn't create a #Railroad tag. Instead I added the word to the note text.
Your question reminds me of the early days of Spotlight. We had become accustomed to organization by nested folders, then suddenly we could search for any word in a file. I tried to be more careful with naming files (especially non-text media.)
In a way it's a numbers game. The longer your note the more likely you will find it via a regular search. On the other hand, if the note contains only a web link, chances are you won't get many hits - that's when additional note text or a tags would be useful.