SEO for Arabic Websites: A 2026 Guide for Saudi Businesses

Your customer in Riyadh types «تصميم موقع». The investor flying in types "website design company Riyadh". Both can reach your site, through different doors. That is where SEO for Arabic websites starts: the Arabic version isn't a translation. It's a page built on how Saudis search, wired to its English twin so Google shows each visitor the right language.

Here is what we apply to bilingual sites, from Arabic keywords to a 90-day plan you can track in Search Console.

How do you research Arabic keywords without translating them?

Start from your customers, not a dictionary. Collect the Arabic words they actually type into Google, including spelling variants and the English terms they borrow, then map each group to one Arabic page. A literal translation of your English keyword list usually produces correct Arabic that nobody searches for.

That is why our SEO and Google Maps service researches keywords in formal Arabic, Saudi dialect and English together. The same customer can use all three in one week.

Arabic spelling comes in several forms

Searchers skip hamzas and swap letters: «اسعار» for «أسعار», «برمجه» for «برمجة». Some pairs are both correct, such as «تصميم موقع» (a website) and «تصميم مواقع» (websites). Don't assume both bring the same impressions. Check the Performance report in Search Console, then pick the stronger correct form for your titles. Never stuff misspellings into the page.

English terms are part of Arabic search

Many Saudis type the technical term as it is, or spell it in Arabic letters: "SEO" and «سيو», "POS" and «كاشير» (cashier). Here's an example from our own site. The English page for Manzomia, our retail POS system, is titled "Retail POS". The Arabic page uses «نظام نقاط بيع» (point-of-sale system) in the title and «نظام كاشير» (cashier system) in the description. We didn't translate the word; we used the two words shop owners know.

Formal Arabic, dialect and search intent

Write the article in clear Modern Standard Arabic, but listen to the words customers use in conversation. Then check intent. «تصميم موقع» is usually a buying search; «تعلم تصميم المواقع» ("learn web design") is a learning search that doesn't belong on a service page.

If you don't read Arabic

Many marketing managers in the Kingdom don't, and that's fine. Ask your writer or agency for the Arabic keyword map with a back-translation column, the search intent of each phrase, and the Search Console data behind it. If they can't show where a phrase came from, it was probably translated.

The research in 5 steps

1. Write down 10 questions customers ask on WhatsApp or by phone, in their own words.
2. Search each one in Google in Arabic, and note the autocomplete suggestions and "People also ask" questions.
3. Open Keyword Planner in Google Ads, set the location to Saudi Arabia and the language to Arabic, and compare rough demand between phrasings.
4. Build a keyword map per language: each keyword group gets one Arabic page, plus one English page if there's an English audience.
5. After 4 weeks, review the Performance report and add the phrasings you've started to appear for.

How should you set up /ar and /en URLs and hreflang?

For most Saudi businesses the simplest setup is one domain, one folder per language, and a separate URL for every page in each language. Then hreflang tags tell Google the two pages are versions of the same content. Google recommends different URLs for each language rather than switching the language with cookies or browser settings.

Our own site, manzomia.com, uses the first option. Arabic pages live under /ar/ with Arabic-script URLs, and English pages under /en/ with English URLs.

Five hreflang rules

• Reciprocal: each page lists itself and its twin, and both carry the same set. If two pages don't point to each other, Google ignores the tags.
• Valid codes: the language in ISO 639-1 (ar, en), with an optional region in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 (ar-SA). "ar-KSA" and "en-UK" are invalid; the region codes are SA and GB.
• x-default: for visitors whose language matches none of your versions. We suggest pointing it to English, because someone browsing in Urdu, Hindi or Tagalog is more likely to read English than Arabic.
• One method: link tags in the page head, HTTP headers, or the sitemap. Google treats the three as equivalent, so pick one.
• Self-canonical: each version is canonical to itself. Never point the Arabic page's canonical tag at the English page.

Don't redirect visitors by language

Google advises against automatically redirecting users from one language version to another. Googlebot usually crawls from the US without an Accept-Language header, so it may never see your Arabic pages. Put a visible language switch on every page and let people choose.

Arabic-script or English URLs for Arabic pages?

Both work. Google detects a page's language from its visible content, not from the URL or the lang attribute. Arabic-script URLs read naturally in Arabic results, but they turn into long percent-encoded strings when pasted into some apps. Choose one pattern, keep it stable, and use 301 redirects if you ever change a URL.

How do you make right-to-left pages fast on mobile?

Since July 2024 Google crawls almost every site with its smartphone crawler. In Saudi Arabia, internet penetration reached 99.6% in 2025, according to the CST Saudi Internet Report. So your Arabic page is judged on a phone first.

The Core Web Vitals thresholds apply at the 75th percentile of page visits, as Google's web.dev explains:

The RTL checklist

• Set lang="ar" and dir="rtl" on the html element of Arabic pages, and lang="en" with dir="ltr" on English ones.
• Use CSS logical properties, such as margin-inline-start instead of margin-left, so one stylesheet works in both directions.
• Mirror arrows and directional icons, but not your logo, photos or numbers.
• Wrap phone numbers and prices in a bdi element or dir="ltr", so their order doesn't flip inside Arabic text.
• Serve fonts as WOFF2, limit yourself to two weights, subset them to the characters you need, and use font-display: swap.
• Use WebP or AVIF images with set dimensions, lazy-load anything below the first screen, and give the hero image high priority.

Warning: test the Arabic version on its own. It can be slower than the English one, because Arabic font files are usually larger.

When we build bilingual websites, we target 90+ in Lighthouse. But Lighthouse is a lab test. The Core Web Vitals report in Search Console uses real visits, which is closer to what Google assesses.

How do you show up in local search in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam?

Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and how well known a business is. Your strongest tool here is your Google Business Profile, backed by a website that confirms its details. We walk through the profile setup in our guide to getting on Google Maps in Riyadh. Once it is live, our Google Business Profile optimization guide covers categories, photos and reviews.

• Matching details: the same name, address and phone number on your site, profile and directories, with your National Address.
• A page per branch: its address, hours, map and photos. Don't publish identical city pages that only swap the city name; Google treats them as doorway pages, which break its spam policies.
• City and district in both languages: write them the way people do, such as «الرياض» and Riyadh, «حي العليا» and Al Olaya.
• Cities without a branch: if you serve Jeddah or Dammam without an office there, give each city specific content: service areas, response times and examples of your work there.
• Real reviews only: fake reviews break Google's policies and hurt your business. Ask real customers, and reply to every review.

Which structured data does a bilingual site need?

Structured data tells search engines who you are and what you offer. Add it as JSON-LD on each language version, with values in that page's language, matching what visitors see. Start with these types:

2026 update: Google stopped showing FAQ rich results for all sites from 7 May 2026, after HowTo rich results had already gone. FAQPage markup can still help Google understand a page, but don't promise anyone a rich result from it.

Validate the markup with Google's Rich Results Test and the schema.org validator after every template change.

How do you write content that AI answers cite?

Google's guide to AI features says a page can appear as a link in AI Overviews and AI Mode if it is indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. There are no additional technical requirements. So the base is solid SEO, plus passages worth quoting. The audience is there: 45.2% of internet users in Saudi Arabia used AI tools in 2025, according to the CST.

• Answer first: open each section with two or three sentences that stand alone, naming the subject and giving the number, city or date.
• Facts with sources: official figures, real prices and your own experience.
• A clear identity: an About page that says who you are, where, since when, and for whom. Ours, for example, states that we are a foreign-owned, MISA-licensed company in Riyadh, that our founder has built web and mobile products for 9+ years, and that our Manzomia system is live at manzomia.com.
• One fixed name: spell your brand the same way in Arabic everywhere.
• Beyond Google: verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and turn on IndexNow. Copilot is grounded in Bing, and Bing is one of the search partners behind ChatGPT search.
• Crawlers: allow search crawlers in robots.txt, including Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot, and check that your firewall or CDN doesn't block them.
• Snippet controls: nosnippet, max-snippet and data-nosnippet also limit what AI Overviews can show, so use them on purpose.
• llms.txt: in June 2026 Google clarified that these files aren't needed for Google Search and don't raise or lower rankings. Keep one only if another service needs it.

Never hide text or write instructions aimed at AI tools; Google's spam policies apply to its AI responses too. If you're short of writing time, our Arabic and English content writing starts from SAR 390 per piece. Our guide to Arabic content writing services shows how to brief and review the copy.

What should you do in the first 90 days?

Work in this order: make sure Google can crawl and understand both versions, then improve the pages that sell, then grow content and local presence. New content won't help if the Arabic page isn't indexed.

Days 1 to 14: technical foundations

1. Verify the site in Search Console as a Domain property covering /ar and /en, and in Bing Webmaster Tools.
2. Submit a sitemap that includes both Arabic and English URLs.
3. Check the Page indexing report and fix 404s, redirect chains and accidental noindex tags.
4. Set lang, dir, hreflang and canonical tags in every template.
5. Review robots.txt and firewall settings for search and AI crawlers.
6. Record a baseline: impressions, clicks and average position for each language.

Days 15 to 45: the pages that sell

1. Finish the Arabic and English keyword map for service and product pages.
2. Rewrite your top 5 pages in native Arabic, with a search title and description for each language.
3. Add structured data: Organization or LocalBusiness, BreadcrumbList and Article.
4. Fix mobile performance: fonts, images and the hero image.

Days 46 to 90: local search and content

1. Complete a Google Business Profile for every branch, with matching name, address and phone.
2. Publish 4 to 8 articles that answer customer questions, each linking to its service page.
3. Link older articles to the new ones, and ask real customers for reviews.
4. Compare day 90 with your baseline and set next quarter's priorities.

How do you measure progress in Search Console?

Measure each language on its own. In the Performance report, add a page filter for URLs containing /ar/, then /en/. Set the country to Saudi Arabia and the device to mobile, and compare the last 28 days with the previous period. Search Console keeps 16 months of data, so record your baseline on day one.

Google launched generative AI performance reports in Search Console on 3 June 2026, and they've been available to all sites since 31 August 2026. They show your impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date, but not clicks or queries yet.

Review the numbers every two weeks, and compare at days 30, 60 and 90. Technical fixes and Maps improvements usually show sooner; competitive keywords take several months of steady work. And nobody can honestly guarantee you the top spot.

Should you do it in-house or with a team?

If you have a developer and a native Arabic writer, this plan is enough to start. If you'd rather have one team handle the audit, technical fixes, Arabic content, Maps and a monthly report, our service starts from SAR 1,900 per month. We are a MISA-licensed company in Riyadh, and we write Arabic from the start, not through translation. Book a consultation and we'll review both language versions of your site, or request a written quote with scope and timeline.