Can joomla sites rank well? Definitely! Much of it will depend on you however. In terms of joomla’s structure, one of the biggest things you should of is install one of the url rewriting components written for joomla that change the url from a meaningless one with numbers, to one that makes sense for visitors, and has a little bit of search engine juice. The best free one is SH404 SEF. There are installation instructions with download.

There are a number of little tweaks you can do. The folks at Alledia go into that in more detail. But the biggest factors in ranking well in the search results relate to your content and your links. There are books, videos, ebooks, and membership sites on SEO. You can learn more about on-page SEO here

The way you structure your site will have an impact. You should make sure your topic is well themed. This is easier than it sounds, and just involves a little bit of research on the search results. Look at the types of subjects the sites in the top 30 cover for your topic. Then keep this in mind when you do your keyword research.

Most importantly, get a lot of relevant links - particularly from sites that have some decent ranking in the search engines. More than anything else, this is the key to your success. It doesn’t matter whether you have a joomla site or not, if you haven’t got these things covered.