@Rich: Perhaps we need to clarify what “complete control” means. There are many facets of SEO that are impacted by the framework, but of course just about anything can be done by modifying the framework, so we need to draw a line somewhere. At the time of this post, for example, Zend Framework did not yet have a full rewrite router integrated into it. So if you wanted to manage URLs for SEO, you had to go outside of the framework (to mod rewrite) or try to work out a customization by modifying the framework. For example, relying only on the framework’s control of views/rendering meant you could not enforce strict URLs (one URL per web resource or rendered view). That was not a reasonable customization due to the ZF conventions in use at the time.

I did not directly answer Cal’s #5 because it is both too general a question for my taste, and because the answer would reveal too much of what I consider to be competitive information. The fundamentals of SEO are well described on the net. Implementing SEO is a strategic craft left to the practitioner, who in fact competes in the search engines with other SEO practitioners.