How to Set Up a Search Engine-Friendly Site

I recently found this SEOmoz post on setting up a search engine-friendly website maintenance page to be great, especially since I have a significant website redesign launch starting in a few weeks.

This leads me to a broader question. As the infrastructure behind a website grows increasingly complex, how much technical knowledge is it reasonable to expect a website mster to possess? Is being able to edit an .htaccess file a still a prerequisite for the job?

As web design team roles become more specialized, the role of the web master remains the one where a wider range of skills — design and usability, web development, content strategy and development, SEO, SEM, information architecture, site performance, analytics, etc. — is needed in order to interact effectively with those specialists