Search Engine Friendly URLs
Select whether or not the URLs are optimized for Search Engines. Setting this option to yes will transform your URLs to be optimized for search engines. By using a page name in the URL you are enabling both visitors and search engine spiders to get a better idea of what the subject of the page would be before actually visiting it. Another benefit of search engine friendly URLs is that when users link to your page, they will often do this with the entire URL as anchor text so when your page name is used within the URL it benefits your rankings for the specific keyword.
This value helps with your SEO ranking and should be turned to YES in the Global Configuration menu.
Use Apache mod_ rewrite
Select to use the Apache Rewrite Module to catch URLs that meet specific conditions and rewrite them as directed. Apache users only! Rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess before activating. This option removes the index.php line within the URL itself. It should be enabled by Apache web server users only. Imagine you are the search engine spider… the more code you view through an outgoing link the longer it will take to gather the information. To top it off you don’t really want index.php on every link within your site. This option makes it look clean and does a better job with your ranking.
Adds Suffix to URL
If yes, the system will add a suffix to the URL based on the document type. Their has been a lot of discussion on the boards on whether or not to turn this option to YES or NO. I will take the FinishJoomla websites recommendation. The quote below comes from that blog.
“A popular topic on the Joomla forum is whether adding a suffix to a URL will affect the rankings in the search engines. My guess would be that the influence of this will be marginal to nonexistent. On the web several arguments are given on the issue of whether to use a suffix or not. Considering the ones listed below I would advise to: not use suffixes in URLs.”
This option doesn’t do much of anything for your SEO rankings and should be turned to NO in the Global Configuration menu.
Unicode Aliases
Choose between transliteration and unicode aliases. Transliteration is default. Since Unicode characters have only been allowed in the URLs for a very short amount of time I would recommend just playing it safe and and not use unicode aliases unless your website depends on unicode characters in your URLs.
This option should be set to NO in your Global Configuration menu until browsers support this as a standard compliance as they all handle this differently at the moment.
Include Site Name in Page Titles
Begin all Page Titles with the site name (for example, My Site Name – My Article Name). Imagine again you are the search engine spider sifting through your site. Would you want them to continually categorize your sitename or the keyword that the particular page is trying to index? Take this site for example. The title is Joomla! 1.6 and SEO – Flagstaff Web Architects. The name comes after the article name. This allows the spiders to have a better understanding of what the page or post has to offer.
This option should be set to NO in your Global Configuration menu as it can harm your keyword phrasing for that particular page.
