The Arabic market represents 400 million people and a combined GDP of more than 3 trillion dollars. Yet most European companies that try to enter it make the same mistakes: they translate their website with Google Translate, use the same keywords as in their home market and wait for results.
It does not work.
Why Arabic SEO is different
Arabic Google is not Spanish Google with a different language. There are fundamental differences that directly affect rankings:
1. Dialects matter
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is used in formal texts and media. But when someone searches on Google from Morocco, they use Darija. From Egypt, they use Egyptian Arabic. From Saudi Arabia, they use Gulf dialect.
The same keywords have completely different volumes depending on the dialect. A tool like SEMrush does not detect 80% of these variations.
2. Text direction affects CTR
A result on Arabic Google with a poorly aligned title or a mix of RTL and LTR instantly loses credibility. Arabic users are extremely sensitive to these errors — they associate them with low-quality content.
3. Arabic hreflang is more complex
hreflang="ar" is not enough. You need to specify by country: ar-SA for Saudi Arabia, ar-AE for UAE, ar-EG for Egypt, ar-MA for Morocco. Without this granularity, Google does not know which version to show in each market.
How to do native Arabic keyword research
The correct process has four steps:
Step 1 — Identify target markets Not all Arabic countries have the same potential for your product. Saudi Arabia and UAE have the highest purchasing power. Egypt and Morocco have more search volume but lower CPC.
Step 2 — Use Google Keyword Planner in Arabic Change the interface language to Arabic and the location to the target country. The volumes you see will be completely different from those shown by Western tools.
Step 3 — Analyse Arabic SERPs manually Search your main keywords from an IP in the target market (use a VPN) and analyse what type of content ranks. Arabic search intent does not always match Western intent.
Step 4 — Include colloquial variants For each MSA keyword, add its colloquial equivalent in the dialect of the target market. Colloquial search volume is usually 3–5 times higher.
Conclusion
Arabic SEO is not difficult. It is different. European companies that treat it with the same approach as Western SEO miss an enormous opportunity.
If you want to know whether your company has potential in Arabic markets, request your free audit — we analyse your sector and tell you which markets make the most sense for you.