I´m building a couple of sites right now and using joomla. I installed the Joomla SEF Patch. But what more can i do to make the site more friendly for search engines and make it better from a SEO point of view. I tried to change the SEO in global configuration but when i change the file htaccess.txt to .htaccess my hole site disappear. Is there a commponent or module that I can download to make Search Engine Friendly URLs?
As for the URL, it seems as though a plugin is the best you can do. I've yet to see a CMS come anywhere close to being as good with SEF URL's as something like Wordpress does.
If your whole site disappeared just by renaming the file to .htaccess, you must not have it edited correctly. Open the file in an editor and read the comments: there are basically two alternatives in the htaccess file, both of which work in different set ups. You obviously need to comment out the current one and uncomment out the other one. Once that's done, you should be fine and once you have 'basic' Joomla SEF working, install OpenSEF for the good stuff.
look http://extensions.joomla.org/index.php?option=com_mtree&task=listcats&cat_id=1803&Itemid=35 and http://www.j-prosolution.com/ . One of them is joomla seo extensitons category and the other is the web site of Opensef .it is a joomla component which is used to create sef urls for joomla