Most CMS’s offer permalinks in the form of keywords within the URL. Using ModRewrite you can easily accomplish this.
First verify ModRewrite is enabled in Apache. 
Create a test folder within your web root path and then create a file named .htaccess in your new folder containing this text:
RewriteEngine On
Now visit yourdomain.com/testfolder. If you get a 500 / Internal Server Error then you need to enable ModRewrite in Apache.
Once the page is loading without a 500 error, we can continue.
I’m going to show you how to turn an ugly URL like:
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?pageid=49382
to
http://www.yourdomain.com/pages/jewelry-and-watches/49382
First, let’s open .htaccess back up and add the following line:
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([0-9]+)[/]?$ index.php?keywords=$1&id=$2
Just to explain, the line above is rewriting any requests like:
/testfolder/these-are-my-keywords/123
to
index.php?keywords=these-are-my-keywords&id=123
Remember it’s not REDIRECTING, it’s REWRITING. This happens blindly to the user/spiders, so it can add true value to your web structures.
Next create a file named index.php in the same test folder with the following contents:
<?php //dump out $_GET variables print_r($_GET); ?>
You can now visit the page in your browser to see it in action.
Example URL:
http://www.yourdomain.com/testfolder/the-keywords-you-want/12345
You should get output from index.php like:
Array ( [keywords] => the-keywords-you-want [id] => 12345 )
I have posted a PHP function that will keywordize a page title or description.