I am so very knew to all of this, so please bear with me and thank you for all of your help.

I posted an article to my website and then googled it to see where it ranked and I actually ranked in the top 30 for one of my keyword phrases...I'm not complaining, I'm still learning.

Anyway, in examining the other results I noticed for instance that the othersites had a link structure like this:

http://www.sitename.com/category/key...-aritcle-title

and mine is like this

www.sitename.com/?cat=41

Does mine show up that way because of the permalink settings? (I'm hoping I am asking about the right thing) Which begs two other questions:

One: Is it important to have the title show up in the URL, especially if it is keyword friendly? (My gut reaction is "yes!")

Two: If so,how do I fix it to give the more "keyword phrase" friendly URL? I'm using WP on my website.