Up to now, we've focused on SEO techniques you can apply when writing and formatting articles, and on adding metadata. Another technique that can make search engines pick up the contents of your site more easily is to make your URLs clear and readable.
You don't have to do anything to make this happen: by default, Search Engine Friendly URLs are turned on. In SEO Settings (found via the System | Global Configuration | Site tab), the Search Engine Friendly URLs option is set to Yes:
The resulting URLs are readable and easy to understand:
http://www.example.com/index.php/getting-started.
This is good news for site administrators, as they don't have to change any settings here. The default URLs are fine for search engines.
There's still some room for improvement: all default Joomla URLs still share the index.php bit. You can get rid of this part of the URLs using the Use URL rewriting option, found in the SEO Settings section. However, this requires a bit more work...