The GCC is one of the fastest-growing digital markets in the world, and buyers there increasingly expect to research in Arabic even when they can read English. An Arabic version of your website is the difference between being found and being ignored — but a badly made one does more harm than none.
We build Arabic sites for clients in real estate, healthcare, automotive and software. This guide covers the four layers that decide whether an Arabic site is credible: layout, typography, content and search.
Right-to-left is a layout, not a text alignment
An RTL page mirrors the whole interface: navigation starts on the right, icons with direction flip, progress steps run right to left, carousels and back arrows reverse. Simply right-aligning translated text on an LTR layout looks broken to an Arabic reader within a second.
Technically this means using logical CSS properties (inline-start rather than left), testing every component in both directions, and handling mixed content: numbers, brand names and English terms inside Arabic sentences must keep their own direction. Phone numbers and prices are the classic place this goes wrong.
Typography that reads well
Arabic script needs fonts designed for it, larger sizes and more line height than Latin text to remain legible; a Latin font's 'Arabic fallback' rarely does. Choose a family that has both scripts designed together so headings look consistent across languages.
Line lengths, letter spacing and bold weights behave differently; never apply letter-spacing to Arabic. Test on real phones — the Gulf audience is overwhelmingly mobile.
Content: translate meaning, not words
Use Modern Standard Arabic for corporate content, with a native reviewer from the target market: vocabulary and tone differ between Gulf, Levantine and North African readers. Adapt examples, currencies (AED, SAR), date formats and contact details — a WhatsApp number, a local address or partner, and working hours in the local time zone.
Localise trust signals too: reviews from regional customers, references known in the market, licences or certifications recognised locally. Machine translation without review is visible immediately and undermines exactly the trust you are trying to build.
Search: making Google rank the Arabic version
Give Arabic pages their own clean URLs (/ar/…), correct html lang and dir attributes, Arabic titles and meta descriptions written for search rather than translated literally, and hreflang tags linking every language version — including x-default. Localised structured data (Organization, LocalBusiness, FAQ) helps both classic and AI search.
Research Arabic keywords separately: the terms people type are often not the translations of your English keywords. Our multilingual SEO guide covers the full process, including content clusters per language.
Launch checklist
Mirrored layout tested on iOS and Android; typography with proper Arabic fonts; native-reviewed content with local details; hreflang and sitemap covering all languages; Arabic Google Business Profile if you have a local presence; Arabic-language ads and landing pages aligned with the site.
Then measure separately: Arabic traffic, rankings in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and conversions per language. Treat the Arabic site as a market, not a translation.
Key takeaways
- RTL means mirroring the whole interface and handling mixed-direction content correctly.
- Arabic needs purpose-designed fonts, larger sizes and no letter-spacing.
- Native review, local currencies, numbers and contact details make the site credible.
- Own URLs, hreflang, Arabic keyword research and localised structured data make it rank.
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