There seems to be a trend of 404 errors, login problems, etc with problems I have been seeing, I think it is time to address these issues and write an article about the SEO/SEF configuration.

Let me start out about what SEO/SEF is.
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It describes the techniques used to enhance a webpage's search engine ranking. The goal of SEO is to get listed on targeted keyword searches, increasing the site's Search Engine originated traffic. For example, if an user searches "web templates", a large human-written article on a well known website gets a higher position in results, while a page containing "web templates" search phrase 100 times on an obscure website will rank very low. Actually, Google may ban a site for unfair techniques, so the second page in our example may not show up in results at all (because keyword stuffing is not tricking SEs today as it used to in the 90s).

A good website is a website with rich, valuable information. We're talking about unique, well-structured text content, cross-linked for easier user access Large articles are a good thing for both human users and SEs. Without the content you can have the best Search Engine Optimization in the world and it will not help.

Adding fresh information to your website on a regular basis makes it more appealing to SE's. Google determines the site update frequency, and sets the website indexing interval accordingly. A frequently updated website gets indexed more often. (Indexing is the SE refresh mechanism. A SE runs automated software [called crawler, or bot] to check websites for content updates)

It's also important to avoid duplicating content on your website. It may be interpreted by the SEs as a spam attempt.

Let me explain a little bit about this and how it works.
First and foremost, your server has to support .htaccess, virtual paths make sure your site is correctly configured to use www or non-www site wide, use a .htaccess hack to make this work.

Lets look at the web address for a second: www.site.org/index.php?option=com_weblinks&task=view&Itemid=22
All of the stuff after the ? tells the server that you are sending information from one page to another and the next page that loads is looking for a value to do something. With the address above we can break it down like so:
option=com_weblinks
task=view
Itemid=22
This is telling Joomla to VIEW the component Web Links and the item 22

Here is a more easier to follow example:
I have a page that I want to give you an option
Option 1 - Submit Article
Option 2 - Read Articles
Option 3 - Delete Article

I am going to choose option 2 - When I call the articles.php page it will look like this: http://www.sample.com/articles.php?option=2

When the articles.php page opens up there is a string in the page that will look for the option you have chosen.

<?php option = $_GET("option"); ?>

This is how Joomla works natively. When the SEF is turned on it changes everything after the ? to "virtual" paths now it would look something like this: http://www.site.com/component/option,com_weblinks/Itemid,22/ Your server MUST support this method and you have to have the new .htaccess file to be setup properly. This is not REALLY making it Search Engine Friendly, it is making it HUMAN READABLE. Search Engines can read everything as long as it is not password protected or turned off.

Now there is the last option Add suffix to URL's: Depending on the type of document it is trying to use it will add a suffix to the URL.

ALTHOUGH! when you enable SEF the site has to populate the new links, same as when you disable the SEF. It may break your site. So do this with care and make sure you understand what all of the items do. Also check your .htaccess file to make sure it is setup properly.

{ADDENDUM}
For further review, let's determine if SEO/SEF is even compatible with your server.
Using your favorite ftp software, in your root directory, locate the .htaccess file. Then open it up in a text editor, if you do not see that file go ahead and create a new .htaccess file and take note of the period at the beginning of the file. The first line of this file, you will need following line: redirect /firefox http://www.getfirefox.com

Save the file, open up your web browser and type in the address bar www.yoursite.com/firefox, use your domain name in the yoursite.com portion. If you get redirected to the Firefox web page then it was successful, if not, then you need to change the web server httpd.conf file. If you are unable to do this you will need to contact your hosting company to do this for you

If something happens you can revert back to non-SEF by simply:
open you file manager or FTP client, and use it to rename your .htaccess back to htaccess.txt
Next, open your configuration.php file which is also located in your Joomla root folder) and change the
$mosConfig_sef = '1';
line to:
$mosConfig_sef = '0';

Save the configuration.php and you're back to non-SEF, but working URLs.

To finalize this post, if you wish to enable the SEO/SEF make sure it is completely done, and published live for 1 week. Then enable the SEO/SEF settings. Test each link manually and make sure everything is working.

I am having issues with my rocket theme templates breaking when I change  "Search Engine Friendly URLs" to Yes in Joomla 1.5.  I can see the text and links, but none of the template source images.  Basically, it's just a white background with the text and links without any of the modules or images.

When I look at the URL, I am getting something that looks like this as well:  http://www.whitesailfinancial.com/index.php/index.php/index.php/j-stuff.html

As soon as I turn the "Search Engine Friendly URLs" back to NO, then the template works fine, and references the orignal Joomal URL's i.e.   http://www.whitesailfinancial.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16&Itemid=18

Any suggestions on the SEF function within Joomla 1.5, and also how to integrate sh404SEF?

I have seen other Rocket Theme sites work perfectly with the new URL's from sh404SEF, but I can't seem to get it to work on my sites?  Anyone with experience using sh404SEF in Joomla 1.5--how did you get this dialed in on your rocket theme templates?

Thank you.

Jeff,

Thanks for the quick reply.  I was able to work on this a little more and was able to get it working correctly with sh404SEF.

Here are the steps I followed:

1) Started with a clean database and install of Synapse
2) Download sh404SEF from http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,2380/Itemid,35/#action
3) Change the htaccess.txt to .htaccess from your CPanel
4) Upload sh404SEF into Joomla from the administrator
5) In Global Configurations, turn on BOTH  Search Engine Friendly URLs  and  Use Apache mod_rewrite
6) Go into the sh404SEF component and click "enable"
7) Your site should now reflect a default SEF URL

I have not played around with any of the other features available in sh404SEF, but at least now it's not breaking the template, and actually looks a lot cleaner.

The other good thing about sh404SEF is that it is loaded with some additional security features which can add value.

Thank you again for the excellent service on the forums.

I've been reading through these articles on SEO and SEF urls for the past month, soaking up all the info I can on the subject.  I keep getting mixed messages though in regards to Joomla and its SEF url functions...

To premise this, I simply cannot get it to work on any site.  I haven't tried it using a fresh install of joomla and have only made attempts on test sites that have already been extensively customized and altered, but I'm also no expert when it comes to .htaccess configuration.  I can follow instructions to the T - but at the end of the day, if it doesn't work, I can only assume the reasons given in these articles are the culprit...

That being said, the sites I have created employing joomla and several of these rocket themes do not seem to have any difficulty climbing the google ranks.  In fact, This past week I created a new domain, ftped a rocketlauncher install of hivemind, customized and added new content without installing any additional components, modules or plugins...  already the site is in the top ten listings on google for all core keywords and I haven't done any marketing, submitted the url, or even used any google webmaster tools that might have influenced a more speedy indexing.

Really, I only want SEF urls for their aesthetic appeal.  However I have this lingering doubt that my sites can be more efficient in terms of SEO if I can get SEF urls to work...  you say in your post Jeff that the big name search engines like google can read the info fine, and my own results for my sites sits in line with this.  At the moment, SEF urls seems only to be more humanly readable. Yet, sh404SEF and its competitor components, as well as several other sites online, claim that these tools really do improve your SEO.

I guess my question is now, if they do make a difference, to what extent?  Is it worth fighting with my host over or possibly even switching hosts?  Again, I'm tempted merely to satisfy the need to make the links more aesthetically appealing, but putting that aside, is their any additional value other than making my links humanly readable to average joe schmoe?

***Update: Worked out the issues with SEF urls and the .htaccess for my sites, but I would still like to know to what extent this function adds any value to SEO. 

Also, I am going to experiment with google in the coming days to see if adding SEF urls to a well established site that has been thoroughly indexed will cause broken links or errors in the search results.  I am unsure if clicking a google result for a previously non-SEF-url will properly direct to the new SEF-url.  Any issue will of course be resolved upon reindexing the site, but for those of us who implement SEF urls for a professional site that has regular traffic, any length of time broken links are within your core keyword search results is too long.  I'll post again after a bit of research.  Anyone that has any more info, comments or suggestions, feel free to share*****

This is a great thread and is helping me to understand my SEF Problems... My site is http://75.125.60.11/~microeng/ and the hots is Siteground.

Question: When I open the .htaccess files to paste in the firefox test, there is nothing there? Am I missing some code?
Any info on how Siteground deals with SEF?

I tried the "Download sh404SEF " solution by Cole Chambers above and unfortunately it did not work.

Thanks, Tim

Using GoDaddy or one of their sub-contractors?
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=429&t=224386&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Help!!
I followed the instructions in Jeff's addendum

"Using your favorite ftp software, in your root directory, locate the .htaccess file. Then open it up in a text editor, if you do not see that file go ahead and create a new .htaccess file and take note of the period at the beginning of the file. The first line of this file, you will need following line: redirect /firefox http://www.getfirefox.com

Save the file, open up your web browser and type in the address bar www.yoursite.com/firefox, use your domain name in the yoursite.com portion. If you get redirected to the Firefox web page then it was successful, if not, then you need to change the web server httpd.conf file. If you are unable to do this you will need to contact your hosting company to do this for you

If something happens you can revert back to non-SEF by "simply:"
open you file manager or FTP client, and use it to rename your .htaccess back to htaccess.txt
Next, open your configuration.php file which is also located in your Joomla root folder) and change the
$mosConfig_sef = '1';
line to:
$mosConfig_sef = '0'; "

Sorry, I can't manage to "quote" this part of the thread.
I managed to see Firefox. But lost my site and my admin functions. Just getting security warnings such as:
Do you want to save this file or find a program to open it ? or Do you want to open or save this file.?
So went to my FTP client to change the name back from .htaccess to htaccess.txt. But where has it gone? The file name is just not showing up in the directory where it was. So how on earth can I rename it back to what it was? I FTP'd another copy of the original htaccess.txt into the directory but it hasn't helped.

I am very much a beginner at all this and feel pretty desperate now. My original problem was that if I didn't have SEF Urls activated then none of my internal links would work. Yet if they were active I could not use my registration or search modules. In trying to solve this I've lost all my admin.

What now, please someone.

My question is related but with a twist. I am currently revamping a legacy site (http://www.kaffeinebuzz.com) that's been up for five years and has hundreds of pages, and will be migrating it to Joomla/Rockettheme. 

I'd like to get feedback from someone who has done this. I understand there's no other way to convert each legacy page to a Joomla page other then to go one by one, copying and pasting content. I can deal with that.

My concern is specifically, preserving the current URLs that are already recognized by search engines, and if I can use SEF to accomplish this. It seems as though I can if I'm able to jump through the configuration hoops, but I'm not completely sure. I've also thought about creating archive pages for each section with links to the legacy pages as they are, non-converted, but have not run a site that is a mix of both php and Joomla pages. So I'm not sure if there's a conflict there.