Arabic Keyword Research: Dialects, MSA, Arabizi & Spelling

Arabic keyword research isn't translation. It's finding the exact word a shopper in Riyadh, Dubai or Kuwait City types into Google.

That word is often not the one your translator picks. For a phone, a Saudi searches جوال, a Kuwaiti types هاتف and an Egyptian types موبايل.

Get it right and you're competing in a market with very little good Arabic content. Get it wrong and your best page ranks for a word nobody in your country uses.

Here's the full method: dialects, country differences, Arabizi, spelling variants, the tools that work and a worked example.

What makes Arabic keyword research different?

English keyword research has one big question: which phrase do people use? Arabic has four, and you need to answer all of them for every product.

Here are the four layers:

Miss one layer and you can target the right idea with the wrong word. The good news is that each layer takes minutes to check once you know where to look.

MSA or dialect: which Arabic do shoppers type?

Both, depending on what they search. Arabic has one written standard, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA, or fusha), and many spoken dialects that people switch between all the time.

In search, it splits roughly like this:

• Product nouns are mostly MSA or pan-Arab words, but some everyday items have a dialect word that beats the textbook one.
• Conversational and voice searches lean on dialect: Saudis type ابي ("I want"), وش ("what") and وين ("where"), Kuwaitis and Bahrainis type شنو, and Emiratis type شو.
• Loanwords follow local habits: the Gulf writes the hard "g" as ج (جوجل, سامسونج), while the Levant often uses غ (غوغل, سامسونغ).

The real danger is the wrong dialect, not too much of it. So much Arabic web text is Egyptian that Egyptian words leak into translations and tools.

A listing with موبايل, شبشب or تكييف quietly misses Gulf searches.

For which register to write each part of a page in, see our guide to Arabic product descriptions.

How do searches differ between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait?

A lot more than most sellers expect. A year of Google Trends data for common product terms gives a different winner in almost every row.

Three things stand out:

• Saudi Arabia is its own market. Most Saudis don't speak the Gulf Arabic of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman, so Saudi winners like جوال don't carry over.
• Kuwait and the UAE look alike. Both prefer هاتف, نعال and Latin-script brand names.
• Some words are local secrets. Shoes in Kuwait are the clearest case.

Here's how the three shoe words compare in Kuwait:

جوتي leads in Kuwait and runs close behind حذاء in the UAE, yet barely registers in Saudi Arabia. A translator from outside the Gulf would never think of it.

One quirk: هاتف also catches "phone number" searches, which lifts it a little in the UAE and Kuwait, but it still leads there.

Want the full Saudi scores for every term? They're in our Saudi Arabia SEO guide.

English, Latin script and Arabizi searches

Gulf shoppers don't only search in Arabic letters. You'll meet three other forms, and they behave very differently.

English words in Arabic script

Shoppers type لابتوب, سيروم, بلوتوث or ايفون 16 برو. These are often the head terms, ahead of any "pure" Arabic word, so research them like any other Arabic keyword.

Brand names in Latin script

In the UAE and Kuwait, "iphone" in Latin letters beats ايفون, while in Saudi Arabia the two split evenly. Brand and model searches are where English matters most, even in Arabic-first markets.

Arabizi

Arabizi, also called Franco-Arabic, is Arabic written in Latin letters, with digits standing in for sounds English lacks:

Arabizi is everywhere in chat and ads, but it's rare in search. Check it for your brand name and social handles, then move on.

Spelling variants: ه/ة, ا/أ/إ and ى/ي

Shoppers type fast on their phones and skip the small marks, so one word can have three or four spellings with their own search volume.

Check these for every head term:

Informal spelling wins more often than you'd think. In Saudi Arabia, ايفون without a hamza scores 37 in Trends, while آيفون scores just 2.

Google normalises some of these variants but not all. Put the dominant form in your title and H1, then use the others once each in the description, FAQs and image alt text, never as a stuffed list.

Which tools work for Arabic keywords?

The usual SEO tools all handle Arabic. The trick is setting each one to the right country and language, and knowing what each is good for.

Expect small numbers. In Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE combined, two hamza spellings of one Arabic phrase get about 70 searches a month each. Tools are also least accurate for dialect words.

That's not a reason to skip Arabic. It's why Trends does the choosing and Keyword Planner only does the sizing.

Step-by-step Arabic keyword research workflow

Here's the process from first idea to a finished keyword map, run once for each country you sell in.

1

Brainstorm with native speakers

Ask a Saudi and an Emirati how they'd search for each product. Write down every word, including dialect, English-in-Arabic and brand forms. Don't start from your English list.

2

Add the spelling variants

For each term, list the hamza, ة/ه, ى/ي, singular/plural and "al-" forms. You'll often end up with 4–6 versions of one idea.

3

Pick the winner in Google Trends

Compare up to five variants with the country set to Saudi Arabia, then repeat for the UAE and Kuwait. The top term per country becomes your main keyword. If two terms are within a few points, cover both.

4

Size it in Keyword Planner

Set location and language, then pull monthly volume for the winners and runners-up. Repeat in English for brand and model terms.

5

Confirm on marketplaces

Type the product into noon and Amazon.sa in Arabic. Note the autocomplete suggestions and the nouns in the top five titles.

6

Check the Arabic results page

Search the main term in google.com.sa. If category pages and marketplace listings rank, build a category page, not a blog post.

7

Cluster and map

Group the variants of one idea onto one URL. Record it in a keyword map: EN keyword, AR keyword, country, intent, URL.

8

Review after three months

Filter Search Console by country and look at the Arabic queries you rank for. Promote the ones that bring clicks into titles and headings.

Want the URL and hreflang side of this? Our bilingual SEO guide shows how to give each country its own Arabic page.

Worked example: women's sandals for three Gulf markets

Say you sell women's leather sandals in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait. Here's how the workflow plays out.

Steps 1–3: brainstorm, variants and Trends

Native speakers give you نعال, شبشب, صندل and حذاء, and your English seeds are "women's sandals" and "women's slippers". You then add the gendered and plural forms: نعال نسائية, شبشب نسائي and صنادل نسائية.

In Google Trends, the نعال vs شبشب comparison splits by country:

• Saudi Arabia: شبشب 42, نعال 39, a near tie, so you cover both on one page.
• UAE: نعال 33, شبشب 2, so نعال wins outright.
• Kuwait: نعال 47, شبشب 1, the same story as the UAE.

Steps 4–6: size and confirm

Pull volumes for both terms in Keyword Planner for each country, then check noon autocomplete in Arabic. The Arabic results for نعال نسائية are mostly marketplace and category pages, so you build a category page.

Step 7: the keyword map

Your finished map has one column per market:

Saudi Arabia is a near tie, so either word could lead. Lead with نعال, the word the UAE and Kuwait use, so one title pattern works in all three markets. Then give شبشب a strong second place.

The UAE and Kuwait pages can drop شبشب entirely.

A store translated by an Egyptian writer would have led with شبشب everywhere and lost most Gulf searches outside Saudi Arabia.

Notes for UAE stores

• Research English first, then Arabic. English is the working language of commerce in the UAE, and Latin-script brand searches beat Arabic ones.
• Don't reuse Saudi titles. هاتف leads phone searches in the UAE, where the Saudi جوال barely registers.
• Add Latin-script brand terms like "iphone 16 case" to Arabic pages too, because UAE shoppers type them even when they browse in Arabic.

Notes for noon and Amazon sellers

• The search bar is your best tool. Marketplace autocomplete shows buyer nouns better than any SEO database.
• Start the Arabic title with the searched noun, then brand and attributes.
• See our guide to noon product listing SEO for title rules and a before/after listing.

Notes for Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain

• Start from your UAE list, not your Saudi one. Gulf Arabic is the native dialect in all three, so their words sit closer to Emirati usage.
• Check each winner in Trends for the country before launch, because local favourites can differ from the UAE.
• Use local question words in FAQs and ads: شنو in Kuwait and Bahrain.

Need a native Gulf writer to apply all this? Browse our Arabic translation agencies, or go back to the SEO guides hub.