Changing address bar URL's to shorter versions

hello,
i could not find the exact answers i needed so here goes. i would like to change the URL's that are displayed in the address to something shorter and more related to my products. an example, for my links page, it reads:

http://www.passionglass.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=10&chapter=0

i would prefer it to be simply-

www.passionglass.com/links

or for any product in a category, like:

http://www.passionglass.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=12&products_id=10

i'd prefer this to be something like, www.passionglass.com/curved/products_id-10

where every product in that category would change.

i think there is some way with htaccess rewrites but i could never get the process down. i figure i have 12 categories with products, then and additional 20 ezcart pages that i'd like to reword.

not sure how to write anything and where any mods should go. please reply as if i'm an ignorant as sometimes i truly am.

peace and happy new year;-)

Please search for SEO URL, there are several mods do that.

I cant tell you which one is better tho, I had some problems with them and the figured out it was not worth all the hassle. My customers didnt care anyway, and modern search engines can handle dynamic URLs pretty well these days.

I'm not an expert on SEO, but I've found that when I started utilizing the product and category meta-tags feature, it helped my search engine hits greatly. I think that now with all the problems with people trying to fake their way into the rankings, the engines are giving more weight to meta-tags matching content, etc.

So if it ain't broke, I'm not about to fix it. :smile:

So if you're using the meta-tags and optimizing them, you'll probably be fine without optimized urls. (I'm thinking in terms of future updates too -- you don't want to do something that might not work with future updates and then you lose your urls. LOL)