The aim of this article is to provide you a basic overview to SEF (search engine friendly URL's) and to outline the benefits  of using SEF for the Joomla Open source content management system (CMS)

SEF - Search engine friendly URL's

By default the Joomla SEF functionality is not enabled which basically mean's the url's displayed via your web site will look  like this http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?option=com_weblinks&Itemid=23

There are a number of disadvantages in SEO terms  for not enabling search engine friendly URL's which include.

There are a number of disadvantages in SEO terms  for not enabling search engine friendly URL's which include.

1) The url does not accurately reflect the Meta title, description or the content included in your news item, menu item or component.
2) One of the many factors in getting ranked by the search engines is to ensure your keywords are included in the url's and they clearly reflect your meta description and content.

How do I enable SEF

Complete the following steps to enable search engine friendly URL's for Joomla.

1) Confirm that your web hosting company support's Apache and mod_rewrite.
   ( most web hosting providers do support this functionality )
2) Access your web host using an FTP client, I would recommend using smartftp.
3) Navigate to the root directory or Joomla installation directory.
4) Select the htaccess.txt file and rename it to .htaccess
5) Now Access the Joomla administrator console
6) Select the Global Configuration item.
7) Select the SEO tab
8) Enable Search Engine Friendly URLs
9) A popup box will now appear to confirm you have renamed the htaccess.txt to .htaccess
10) When you view your web the URL's will now look like http://www.site.com/content/view/1/2/ or http://www.domain.com/Section_Name/Categoryname/Item_Name/

SEF Advance

SEF Advance is developed by one of the core Joomla development team called Emir Sakic and is a commercial search engine friendly URL component which basically compliments the existing Joomla SEF to bring additional functionality and control over your URL's. It also enhances your chances of achieving a higher ranking position across Google, Yahoo, MSN.

Please note this topic is open to debate and some people will agree and disagree with the following but I am only providing  you with the experience I have from using SEF. Also note by enabling the SEF functionality or purchasing a 3rd party 
component is only one part of the search engine optimization process. You also need to consider content, meta tag's ( h1/h2  tags, bold and italic) description, keywords, linking strategy, web design ,keyword density, domain name all of which play an important role.

What are the benefits of using SEF Advance.

1) SEF advance provides you with more control and functionality to manage your URL's.
2) It produces meaningful keywords within the URL's for your components, menu items and content items.
3) Includes functionality to manage your URL's based on Long URLs, Lower case ,Unique item's and URL Alias
4) Including your keyword's and providing the search engine's with URL descriptions which clearly reflects your content and  meta descriptions, can improve your chances of achieving a high ranking position across the search engines.

Before you install SEF Advance your url's will look like http://www.domain.com/Section_Name/Categoryname/Item_Name/
After you install and configure the component you can generate url's to look like 
http://www.joomlaseo.net/The_News/Search_Engine_SEO_Articles/Keyword_Density.html

For more information about SEF Advance visit the sakic web site.

What if I use the built in Joomla SEF

Again SEF is a difficult subject to cover and is open to debate. The built in Joomla SEF functionality can and will deliver  the results you require. For example type the keyword Joomla in Google.com and you will see both Joomla.org and  mamboportal.com both rank highly for the keyword but one of the main disadvantages when using the built in SEF is you lack the 
functionality and control over the URL's parameters. Also note joomla is one of the big players in the community and  therefore it's position in Google is guaranteed.

To summarise in my in my opinion and from experience I would recommend you consider SEF Advance which I believe is a valuable  addition to Joomla. If you are small business or individual with a minimal budget then you need consider the best possible  options and tools at your disposal to compliment Joomla and attract customers plus traffic. If that mean's spending 40 euros  on SEF advance then I personally think its a good investment.

In the future I also plan to write an article on the free SEF open source tool which are available for download.