Direct Alias Pro 3.1.3

Direct Alias Pro 3.1.3

Allows you to control menu item alias and have short SEF URLs without including aliases of parent menu items. Removes IDs from Joomla content articles, categories and tags URLs.

Joomla native routing is not quite robust and you can't control how the SEF URL of menu item is built. You can only define menu item alias - a component of URL.
By default aliases of Joomla menu items are relative: aliases of all parent menu items are auto-prepended to SEF URL.
So child menu items have URLs like:
http://site.com/parent-menu-item-alias/child-menu-item-aliasThis plugin allows you to switch alias to 'direct' mode and have short URL without aliases of parent menu items:
http://site.com/child-menu-item-aliasEg. this page could have URL http://alterbrains.com/direct-alias instead of http://alterbrains.com/joomla-extensions/seo/direct-alias.
Another option is not include alias of certain menu item into SEF URL of child items.
Additionally to the functionality of Direct Alias (free extension) listed above you can remove IDs from Joomla content articles, categories and tags URLs.
So instead of http://site.com/news/34-article-alias you will get http://site.com/news/article-alias.
Instead of http://site.com/news/12-news-subcategory-alias you will get http://site.com/news/news-subcategory-alias.
Instead of http://site.com/news/12-news-subcategory-alias/34-article-alias you will get http://site.com/news/news-subcategory-alias/article-alias.
Same for Joomla tags URLs: instead of http://site.com/tags/34-tag-alias you will have http://site.com/tags/tag-alias.
Previous native URLs with IDs are redirected to new URLs with 301 status, so search engines index will be preserved.
The demo is right here - check our News: it's usual Joomla 'Articles -> Category Blog' page but there are no article IDs.
Plugin adds only a single database query per category/article page, but it doesn't matter if Joomla caching is used. It's a nice and simple alternative to monstrous 3rd-party SEF extensions.