Arabic Contractor Website Saudi Arabia: Get Found in Arabic
Many contracting and renovation companies in Saudi Arabia have an English website because the owner, the engineers or the main clients work in English. Then they wonder why villa owners in Riyadh or Jeddah never find them. The reason is usually simple: the homeowner typed the search in Arabic, and the site had nothing in Arabic for Google to match.
This guide explains how to add Arabic to a contractor website the right way, so Google can show the Arabic pages to Arabic searchers and the English pages to everyone else, and so both sets of visitors end up sending you a quote request.
Think about how a family looking for a renovation company actually searches. They type phrases such as مقاول ترميم بالرياض, تشطيب فلل جدة or شركة عزل أسطح الدمام. Facility managers and consultants may search in English, but many private clients do not. A page that only says "villa renovation Riyadh" in English is not a strong match for an Arabic query, however good the work behind it.
So the aim is not a translated home page. It is a real Arabic version of every page that brings in work: each service, each project, the company profile and the quote form.
This is where many bilingual sites go wrong. Google says it uses the visible content of the page to work out its language, not code-level settings such as the lang attribute or the URL. Its page on localised versions repeats that Google doesn't use hreflang or the HTML lang attribute to detect the language of a page.
In practice that means:
Google recommends a different URL for each language version instead of switching language with cookies or browser settings. It also advises against automatically redirecting visitors from one language to another based on what it guesses they want.
A simple structure that works for most contractors:
/ar/ for Arabic pages, for example /ar/villa-renovation./villa-renovation.Never force an Arabic visitor onto English, or the other way round. An engineer at a consultancy may prefer English on an Arabic phone. Let them choose.
Hreflang tags tell Google which pages are translations of each other. Two rules from Google's documentation matter most:
Language codes can include a region, so ar-SA and en-SA are valid if you only serve the Kingdom. If you also work in other Gulf countries, plain ar and en are simpler.
Machine translation of contractor copy produces Arabic that a Saudi reader spots in one line. Worse, it often picks words people do not search for. Some practical points:
Check the terms you rank for and the ones your clients say on the phone. Common forms include مقاولات عامة (general contracting), ترميم (renovation), تشطيبات (finishing), صيانة (maintenance), عزل (insulation and waterproofing), سباكة and كهرباء. Use the city names as people write them: الرياض، جدة، الدمام، الخبر.
If your English site has separate pages for villa renovation, apartment finishing and roof waterproofing, the Arabic site needs the same three pages, each with its own Arabic title and meta description. One long Arabic page listing every service is unlikely to rank well for any of them.
Arabic written inside a banner image is not page text: it does not help the page match a search, and it often looks blurry on phones. Put headlines and offers in real text.
Your commercial registration number, Saudi Contractors Authority membership and classification should appear on the Arabic pages too, written in Arabic. We covered how to present them in our guide to SCA credentials for Riyadh contractors. Project pages need Arabic captions: neighbourhood, type of property, scope and year.
On Google Business Profile, Google's rule is that your name should reflect your business's real-world name. Use the name on your signage and documents. Do not add keywords such as "best renovation Riyadh" to it in either language.
If most of your work comes from homeowners and local private clients, make Arabic the default and English the second language. If you mainly work for consultants, main contractors and international clients, English-first is fine, as long as the Arabic version is complete.
No. Automatic translation in the browser does not create separate Arabic pages that Google can index, and the wording is rarely what clients search for. Write or review the Arabic with a fluent speaker.
The facts should match: same services, projects, licences and contact details. The wording can differ, because the search terms differ. That is normal.
Start with the home page, each service you want work for, the company profile and the contact or quote page. Add Arabic project pages as you complete jobs.
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