Four steps to convert those long and messy Joomla URLs to more meaningful and Search Engine Friendly ones.

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Step 1. Server Requirements

• Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs only work for websites hosted on an Apache Server.
• You must have mod_rewrite enabled.
  To check this go to administration > System > System Info. Click on PHP Information tab. Scroll down until you find Loaded Modules row. mod_rewrite should be listed here. If it's not ask your network administrator or your web host to activate mod_rewrite.
• You server must allow htaccess override.
  You can check this by deleting everything from your .htaccess file and write a simple command here, for example:
  
  Redirect /google.html http://www.google.com

  
  Now point your browser to http://www.your_site.com/google.html. If it redirects you to Google.com then you are OK.

Step 2. Rename Joomla htacess.txt file

• Using Dreamweaver or your preferred FTP client, rename the file htaccess.txt located in your Joomla directory to .htaccess

Step 3. Turn on SEF in Joomla

• Log into your Joomla Administration Control Panel (http://www.your_site.com/administration)
• Click on Global Configuration
• In Global Configuration, click on SEO tab and activate Search Engine Friendly URLs by selecting Yes

For those of you using Apache server on Windows like myself, you will have trouble enabling SEF.  After much searching, I have found a solution.  This involves modification to Apache's http.conf:

• Find your Apache installation directory and go to conf directory and edit httpd.conf.
• If you don't have the following entries below, just add it and save.
  <Directory />
  Options FollowSymLinks
  AllowOverride All
  </Directory>
  
• Restart Apache and that's it!

By following the steps above and assuming everything goes well for you, your URLs should look something like this:

• Example URL: http://www.your_site.com/content/view/10/5/

Although these type of URLs are much friendly to search engines than the default Joomla URLs, they don't have any keywords in them, thus not very meaningful.

Step 4. More Meaningful URLs

That's where OpenSEF comes in - an open source component that rewrites the URLs with content titles.  Using OpenSEF you can have addresses such as:

• Example URL: http://www.your_site.com/about.html

• Download OpenSEF (Free!)

• Installation Tutorial. 

Cheers! 

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