Targeting Countries in the Middle East

[Jbeetle]

Hi guys,

I have a client based in the Middle East using a generic top level domain (.com), and they want to target multiple countries in the GCC (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar etc).

I’m thinking that using the hreflang tag would be the best solution here, however the pages will mostly have the exact same content. There will only be slight changes on some pages in terms of using localised title tags [client service] followed by [targeted country], h1's and meta descriptions.

Is this the correct approach? And if so should this be implemented side wide or can it be implemented on selected pages only?

The site will be in English only.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Mark,

Usually going with hreflang is the best option out there, Google will then recognise that the data that comes from such a domain is the same but translated or updated to reflect the changes for that language/country. But I must admit that usually I see that the content is translated. So keeping it in English might not be the best idea.

[Jbeetle]

thanks for your help Martijn.

[Aleyda]

Hi Mark,

The best way to approach if your client wants to target each country with a gTLD is enabling specific subdirectories for them:

yourbrand.com/sa/ for saudi arabia 
yourbrand.com/ae/ for the UAE 
.. etc.

and then register and geolocate each one of them in Google Search Console International Targeting: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en

Besides this, you should use hreflang annotations in order to inform Google the relationship of the different pages you will have for each country & language, and make sure that they rank the right version for the right country/language results. You can generate them easily by using: http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/

Like this, with the geolocation in Google Search Console + the hreflang usage it's going to be understood that they're not duplicated pages, but pages targeting to different countries and versions even if the content is pretty similar or the same, although of course, I would also recommend that you really localize the content to make it very specific and as much relevant as possible to every audience -always in their own language, using their own terms-, even if they speak the same language, there are always terms and preferences that will be different, and therefore a need to personalize the content to target them.

I hope this help

[Jbeetle]

Hi Aleyda,

What you've said makes perfect sense.

Thank you so much for your response.