With the biggest e-commerce market in Middle East region, Saudi Arabia holds vast opportunities for those looking to market their products and services in the region. This article will discuss some facets of reaching a Saudi Arabian audience with your search engine optimization efforts. Of course, one article cannot sum up all the strategies for reaching an audience in the KSA, but here we will reveal eight keys to effective SEO in Saudi Arabia.

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In light of the fact that we have found it difficult to find an online resource that provides multi-lingual Internet marketers with Arabic translations of commonly used SEO terms we created such a glossary in this blog post.  Since the Arabic SEO industry is still relatively young in the Middle East some who read this post may use other SEO jargon not listed here or may have alternate Arabic translations or definitions for the vocabulary below.  This list is a work in progress, so your suggestions are welcome in the comment section below in English or in Arabic.  Also, new jargon comes into use on at least a yearly basis, so if you see a new term missing from this list, be sure to post and let us know. (more…)

Online marketing in the Middle East can be extremely rewarding for those who are willing to engage in this rapidly growing region. With many market niches with little to no competition in the region those who invest wisely could see huge returns. Despite this, there are still many mistakes that companies seeking to grow their online presence in the region can make. Some mistakes can decrease a company’s potential return in the region while other mistakes could result in tarnishing a company’s reputation in the region. In this post I will highlight 6 common online marketing mistakes that companies new to the region often make.

1. Forgetting to optimize your website for mobile

Regardless of where you live in the world smart phone usage rates are going up significantly.  Growth in smart phone usage in the Middle East surpasses most regions in the world. In Saudi Arabia for example more than 60% of the population has adopted smartphones. Failing to make your website mobile friendly in both Arabic and English could cost you leads and sales. (more…)

Getting your website to rank high in search engines in the Middle East is a common challenge these days.  With many viable market opportunities across the Middle East and North Africa online businesses want to take advantage of these opportunities.  However, getting visibility in Middle East search engines isn’t as easy as just setting up a well designed website.  In this post I will outline some of the major factors that go into determining whether or not a website will show up in the Middle East.

ccTLDs

As with just about any region of the world a country code top level domain (ccTLD) is possibly the strongest signal for getting a website to appear in a specific country.  The MENA region is no exception to this rule.  If you want to target a specific country like the UAE you would want to purchase a .ae domain name.  If you were targeting just Arabic speakers in that country it might even be worth while to purchase the Arabic version of the ccTLD for the UAE which is امارات.  Depending on the country you want to focus on in the region these domain names can vary in price and difficultly to attain.  If however your website offer is specifically tailored to one specific country in the Middle East it makes a lot of sense to have a country specific ccTLD.  In addition its preference to search engines many residents of the country you choose to target will prefer to click on a website with a country specific domain because of its increased relevance to them.  (more…)