We went over many topics at the Drupal 101 Workshop on Thursday April 9th 2009, I will be posting some notes here. For a more complete SEO-friendly setup for your site, download the SEO Checklist module http://drupal.org/project/seo_checklist and follow the instructions

Module requirements

NOTE: If you have downloaded the Acquia Drupal distribution from http://acquia.com/downloads then these are already included, otherwise:

1. Token - http://drupal.org/project/token
2. Pathauto - http://drupal.org/project/pathauto
3. Path - included in the core Drupal distribution

Configuration

NOTE: These are just how I set things up, obviously tailor to your individual needs/preferences!

1. Enable the above modules in Site building->Modules (/admin/build/modules from your site root)
2. Go to Site building->URL aliases->Automatic alias settings (/admin/build/path/pathauto from your site root)
3. I set General settings->Maximum number of objects to alias in a bulk update to something representing the current number of nodes on your site or higher - the default is quite low so you can often forget this. I set it to 9999 but this could be trouble if done on a live site so you would need to do it in smaller batches in that particular use case
4. I set Blog path settings->Pattern for blog page paths to 'blog/[user-raw]' rather than 'blogs/[user-raw]'
5. Check the 'Bulk generate aliases for blogs that are not aliased' so that this new setting gets updated
6. I set Node path settings->Default path pattern to '[title-raw]' rather than 'content/[title-raw]'
7. I set Node path settings->Pattern for all Blog entry paths to 'blog/[author-name-raw]/[yyyy]/[mm]/[dd]/[title-raw]'
8. Check the 'Bulk generate aliases for nodes that are not aliased' so that this new setting gets updated
9. I set Taxonomy term path settings->Default path pattern to '[vocab-raw]/[catpath-raw]' rather than 'category/[vocab-raw]/[catpath-raw]'
10. Check the 'Bulk generate aliases for terms that are not aliased' so that this new setting gets updated
11. I set User-tracker path settings->Pattern for user account page paths to 'member/[user-raw]/track' rather than 'users/[user-raw]/track'
12. Check the 'Bulk generate aliases for user-tracker paths that are not aliased' so that this new setting gets updated
13. I set User path settings->Pattern for user account page paths to 'member/[user-raw]' rather than 'users/[user-raw]'
14. Check the 'Bulk generate aliases for users that are not aliased' so that this new setting gets updated
15. When you're ready, click Save configuration and watch the magic happen!