Kuwait SEO Guide

Kuwait SEO is both similar and unique to SEO in other countries in the Arab World. In this guide, we will discuss many of the factors that can help a website rank well in Kuwait and in many cases, the rest of the Arab world. If you are looking to get help with SEO in Kuwait or if you want to get more traffic from wealthy Kuwaitis to your website, this guide should be helpful.

 

Why you want to rank on Google in Kuwait

 

Kuwait is part of the wealthy group of Arab countries called the GCC. In our experience, it is the 3rd most important country in the Gulf for a few reasons, but the most important reason is its GDP per capita which is about $33,030 in 2024 and it has no personal income tax. This makes it so the discretionary income of the average Kuwaiti is large. This is higher than Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman. It also has the 4th largest population in the GCC with just over 4.36 million people. Finally, because the country is so small, many physical retailers can’t carry as wide a selection of products as retailers in large countries can carry. This means that Kuwaitis often go online to find products that local retailers can’t afford to keep in stock. Kuwait Google marketing will help you attract these Kuwaiti customers seeking more options.

 

How Kuwait is different from other Arab countries online

 

A few things make Kuwait different than other Gulf countries.

1. It’s basically one big city: 100% of the population lives in areas classified as urban centers.
2. It’s not a big tourist destination: unlike nearby Doha or Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Kuwait City does not see a lot of international tourism.
3. It’s more isolated than the other GCC countries
4. Bigger multinational e-commerce companies typically don’t have a local presence in Kuwait, and on the other hand, local Kuwait businesses tend to lack online presence.
5. Because there is little variety in the local market, Kuwaitis are used to buying online more than other countries in the region.

Kuwait’s e-commerce penetration of 58% is the fourth highest in the Middle East: so clearly, despite being such a small country, the majority of Kuwaitis have embraced the ease of online shopping. Kuwait also has an extremely high social media usage rate at nearly 96% of the population. Granted how conducive social media can be to online sales, it’s no surprise that the Kuwait e-commerce market is thriving.

Above is an ad for Raha, which is a popular Kuwait-based e-grocery service that launched in 2022. In fact, Raha operates Kuwait’s first fully robot-operated automated fulfillment center. Raha’s success is a clear indicator of the high demand for e-commerce services in Kuwait.

 

Keys to ranking in Kuwait

 

The Arabic Language

The Arabic language is essential to your SEO efforts in Kuwait. Kuwaitis are Arabs, and their first language is Arabic, so marketing to them with Arabic pages on an Arabic website will be most effective. Like in many other Arab countries, this is likely the most important factor for increasing your traffic from Kuwait. In general, there are far fewer websites in the Arabic language, so the competition with Arabic SEO is far less than in English.

Despite the importance of Arabic, many Kuwaitis are schooled in English and prefer to use English online so optimizing for English keywords is important too. Another thing to consider with this is that only around 30% of the people living in Kuwait are actually Kuwaiti nationals. The rest are expats living and working in the country. Many of these foreign nationals come from other Arabic-speaking countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also from other regions, like Central and Southeast Asia. A significant amount of foreigners in Kuwait speak English rather than Arabic, so in order to include them in your target audience you should make sure that your content is English-accessible.

 

Link building to rank in Kuwait

Unlike other countries worldwide, getting local links from Kuwait doesn’t seem to be a huge ranking factor in Kuwait. We think this is because of the small number of Kuwait-based websites in general. We find that getting regional links from other Middle East countries can help you rank better, and in tests, we’ve found that international links from outside the region are usually effective if the links are attracted naturally.

 

Domains

In general we find that .com’s and other non-local specific domains can perform well in Kuwait. However, if you have a multi-domain presence and you are seeking to have a strong presence in Kuwait, it can make sense to buy a .com.kw domain. Buying a Kuwaiti domain extension requires using a trustee service and requires that the company has a trademark registered. It is also more time-consuming and costly than buying a .com so in most cases it’s not worth the effort unless you have a physical presence in Kuwait.

 

Regional Hosting

Up until recently, regional hosting options in the GCC weren’t available for smaller websites, so for most websites, we would recommend hosting your website in Europe if you are targeting Kuwait. However, recently Amazon AWS started offering hosting in the UAE and Bahrain and Alibaba now offers hosting in the UAE. Both companies’ server locations are close to Kuwait, so for larger websites doing a lot of business in the region, it can make sense to host in the GCC.

 

Local SEO in Kuwait

If you have a physical presence in Kuwait, setting up a Google My Business profile to show up in the local search results pack can make sense. If you don’t have a physical presence in Kuwait but you see many of the keywords you want to target have local map results that show up in Google you can invest in setting up a virtual office address through serviced office companies like Regus and then set up a Google My Business account with that address. That said, for many types of online businesses, it isn’t worth the effort to do this.

 

Geo-targeting parts of Kuwait

Kuwait is a small country with basically one big city with a lot of urban sprawl, so geo-targeting for SEO purposes won’t be as effective as in large countries with many cities. That said, you can geo-target by the districts within Kuwait in some cases.

 

Some of Kuwait City’s Districts you may consider targeting include:

• Hawalli
• Al Farwaniyah
• Al Jahra
• Al Ahmadi
• Mubarak Al-Kabeer

 

Two of the wealthy suburbs of Kuwait City include

1. Residential Shuwaikh
   • Residential Shuwaikh is a subset of the larger Shuwaikh district, home to Kuwait’s most important port as well as several industrial areas. This district is a hub for commerce, as well as having entire areas specifically dedicated to education and healthcare facilities.
     
2. Abdullah Alsalem’s Suburb
   • This area is famous for being home to some of Kuwait’s richest families and highest property values. It is well connected to other areas of Kuwait City by main highways, and a popular area to visit.

 

If you’d like help with your SEO in Kuwait in Arabic and English, contact us to learn more about our services.

 

Other services you might be interested in

• Kuwait PPC Advertising