The Arab Emirates is a country with a rapidly developing economy and a high standard of living. Affluent people from all over the world come to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. In this regard, many companies are seeking to promote their websites in the UAE to attract new customers and expand their audience. In this article, we will look at the features of website promotion in the Arab Emirates and the opportunities it provides.
Features of SEO in the Arab Emirates
- Language. When promoting a website in the UAE should take into account the linguistic features of the region. Most of the population speaks Arabic, but the entire business community – English-speaking. Therefore, you can safely promote the site in English, as do all my clients who are promoted in the UAE. An Arabic version of the site is desirable, but not obligatory.
- Legislation. The Arab Emirates has strict laws and regulations governing internet companies and advertising agencies. It is important to familiarize yourself with these rules and comply with them to avoid problems with the law. If you have an established Legal Entity in the UAE, have purchased a .ae domain and are operating legally, you have nothing to fear.
- Cultural peculiarities. When promoting websites in the Arab Emirates, it is necessary to take into account the cultural peculiarities of the region. This will help to create more attractive and relevant content for the local audience. But here it is important, who exactly is your audience – the local indigenous population or visitors. This is where cultural sensitivity comes into play
- Domain zone. The most correct solution is to open a legal entity in the Emirates (according to my information it costs from 3 thousand dollars) and register a domain in the zone .AE (without a legal entity it is impossible to do). Such a domain will give you an advantage for promotion and the site, even having existed only a few months, will begin to occupy the first places in the Google rendition, that is, the promotion of such a domain will be faster. But there is a nuance – the domain .ae gives you a head start only for the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and India (for some reason the Indian Google likes domains zone .ae), in the rest of the Internet such a domain boost will not give and the site there will move slowly. Therefore, you need to immediately decide what audience is more important to you – the Middle East or the world. If the site needs to promote not only in the Emirates, I recommend the zone .COM
- Backlinks. Backlinks from sites throughout the English-speaking segment work well for promotion in the UAE, you don’t have to limit yourself to just Arabic sites.
- Content. Updating the content on the site is as important as when promoting in other countries. Informative blog articles work very well, they are easier to promote and this is what gives the first traffic to the site.
- Seasonality. It should be taken into account that in the summer months in the Emirates is a heat of 40-50 degrees Celsius, and therefore business at this time develops more slowly, wealthy people in the summer prefer countries with a milder climate. In October, life begins to boil again and so on until May
Why is SEO in UAE important for businesses?
- High competition: The UAE market is saturated with offerings in many different areas. To stand out from the competition and attract the target audience, you need to make your website visible in search engines.
- Target audience: The UAE is home to many affluent people who actively use the internet to search for goods and services. SEO promotion allows you to reach this solvent audience and increase sales.
- Local Search: A large proportion of users in the UAE search for information and shop online in Arabic. SEO specialists who speak Arabic and are familiar with the local market can help your site rank in the top search results for Arabic-language queries, but that’s if you’re targeting a local audience. For most affluent people, English is the preferred language of promotion
How to choose an SEO company in the UAE?
When choosing an SEO company in UAE, it is important to pay attention to the following factors:
- Experience: The company should have experience working with sites in the UAE and knowledge of the peculiarities of the local market. The algorithm of site promotion in Dubai is the same as in the rest of Google, but here the frequency of queries and the terms of bringing to the top – different. Therefore, the company, or a specialist who has the relevant experience is more preferable.
- Team: The company’s team should include specialists who speak English (and preferably Arabic) and know the intricacies of SEO promotion in the region.
- Cases: The company should have successful cases of website promotion in UAE.
- Testimonials: Look for customer reviews about the company.
Cost of website promotion in the UAE
When we talk about seo promotion in the UAE, we mean, first of all, promotion in Dubai. On this emirate as a rule and is customized SEO.
So, let’s discuss what kind of work needs to be done and what is their cost
Backlinks – as a rule, the link budget is from $500 per month, and further depends on the capabilities of the client. Less is also possible, but it is already “dancing with a tambourine”.
Content – usually 10 articles, which the client orders from my copywriters, require about 300$. This is a very low price! However, the quality of the articles is not bad. Of course, all articles are proofread by the client before publishing on the site.
The cost of work SEO-specialist – from $ 500 per month
The work includes: semantics, work with backlinks, search for drop-domains, technical tasks for texts, technical audit, competitor analysis … That is, all the work that is necessary to occupy the site first lines in Google.
That is, we have a minimum monthly budget of 1300$
Timeline for promotion to the top of Google
Terms of promotion depend on the subject of your site, and even more – on the competition in your subject. In my experience, the earliest when the first leads came to the site (when promoting a new domain) – it is on the 3rd month of promotion.
Of course, the pace of promotion also depends on the age of your site and domain, the older the domain – the faster the promotion and vice versa.
SEO in the UAE is an investment that will pay off!
I have been promoting websites for 15 years, and I have been promoting websites in the Arab Emirates for 5 years. During this time I have accumulated some experience and cases that I would like to share. You can find my full portfolio at this link
And in this article I will show some screenshots so you can understand what you can achieve when promoting a website in the UAE
The first case study is a law firm assisting in starting a business in Dubai
At the very beginning of the promotion, traffic according to AHREFS data was 7194
As you can see from the graph, after a year of promotion the traffic increased to 29465 visitors per month. And we are talking about traffic from search, only from Google. That is, the attendance soared more than 4 fold. That’s how, systematically moving according to my plan, we increased thematic traffic more than 4 times and the site became a niche leader
I wrote more about this case study in a blog post
The second case study is the website of an IT company producing software for the construction business
An interesting fact is that at the very beginning the firm planned to promote only the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but since the content on the site is English-language, the promotion went to the United States and other English-speaking countries. Therefore, in the process of promotion, it was decided to reformat the site for the whole world.
As you can see from the chart, there is not a lot of traffic on the site, but for this niche these numbers are quite good – the niche is very narrow.
3 case – site of DATING topics
I have a lot of UAE cases, but here I decided to show only 3. If you need advice on promotion in the UAE, then email me at kirillyandovskiy@gmail.com or on Telegram – @yandowski (the direct link is in the header of the site).
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Good luck with your SEO-promotion!