Google Ads in Arabic language is considered one of the main digital marketing channels to reach the Arabic audience. Eventually, setting up the Google Ads in Arabic requires key essential practices to make sure you are not burning through your money without reaching your targeted consumer segment.
Starting with proper planning and effective paid ads strategy will help in setting up the Google Ads account effectively. Therefore, I will provide the main top practices to increase your engagement rate!
Firstly and foremost, what I will explain next focuses on Arabic SEM related tactics and I will not talk about the generic ones. Many others have already trod this path before.
1. Think Arabic When It Comes To Your AdCopy
It is the first time the user lays eyes on your brand. Believe me, you do not want to send a first wrong message. The Arabic language is not easy, so Google translate will not really help you to craft a good Google ad. You will need a human to help you generate an authentic message through your ad copy so that you will deliver the right message and boost the engagement rates with your audience. Let’s have a look at one example below:
Below are two ads triggered when you search for the keyword “Book a flight” in Arabic. As an Arabic native speaker, I can clearly see that the first ad is written by someone who understands Arabic well while the second sounds really like a machine translation. Even though it is still Arabic, the second ad lacks coherence and it is full of ambiguity. It totally gives me a wrong impression about the brand, also I do not know what I should expect to see on the landing page if I decide to click on the ad. So, if you want the right audience to click your search ads, make sure that you write an ad copy that is clear, coherent, and can define your own brand.
2. How to Optimize The Arabic Keywords Match Type?
No matter what match type strategy are you following, whether it is Exact, Phrase, or BMM Match type. You need to pay extra attention to the fact that due to the Arabic language complexity, the same Arabic keyword can have several prefixes or/and suffix attached to it, the thing that can change the meaning of the word but Google Ads will consider it just one word. For instance:
The keyword “تصليح جوال” which means “repair my mobile” can have multiple versions as follows:
تصليح جوالي , تصليح الجوال , تصليح الجولات , تصليح جواله
Those four terms might look the same but they slightly have different meaning and you cannot be really sure how the close variants of Google Ads will work in your Arabic keywords. So, my advice is to keep testing different match types for the same keywords and keep a close eye on the search term report to add/remove keywords as needed until you reach the best version and match type of your target keywords
3- How To Optimze The Negative Keywords List?
I have an example here of some Arabic ads triggered by the “Booking Private flight” search query in Arabic.
First ad translation:
- Booking a private flight. Get quotations now
- we promise you the highest standard of luxury, privacy, and safety………………………..etc.
Second ad translation:
- Flights to Cairo, book flights for Egyptians.
- Book now return flights to Egypt……… etc
What happened here is that I was searching for a private flight and two ads were triggered, the first one is offering the exact service I am really looking for but the second ad is actually not offering PRIVATE flights but just normal public flights. The issue here is that the word “Private” in Arabic should have been added to the negative keywords list in the second ad so that it will prevent their ads from triggering when a user searches for a private flight. This explains why a strong negative Arabic keywords list can save the day and hence save your money too. Thus, make sure to conduct solid Arabic keywords research that taps into all possible negative keywords.
4- Localize The Arabic Ads Efficiently
This might really sound straightforward ! You are now probably saying, “Yeah, I know I have to localize my Google ads into the target language”. This is not that simple though because Arabic language is spoken by 22 different countries and each country has its own version of Arabic and as a result each Arabic country has a its own unique way to search online in Google. For instance the word “Car” in Arabic can be searched online differently based on what Arabic country you are from;
- Users from Egypt will use the word: عربية
- Users from Saudi Arabia will use the word: سيارة
Because of those differences, you need to treat the AdCopy, keywords in Arabic localization a bit differently. So, what you can do here is to either use standard Arabic which is common and widely understood between all Arabic counties and this will be a good solution or really learn the differences between the same word or term in the specific Arabic country and this will be a better solution.
5- Why Your Arabic Keyword Research Went Really Wrong?
I have worked on dozens of Arabic Google ads accounts and the most common thing between them is lots of irrelevant keywords and the conclusion I came to is that all keywords research tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush and etc do not really work efficiently when it comes to the Arabic language. I have no clue why, but they sometimes really screw the keyword research. You would see inaccurate numbers about the search volumes as well as those tools will be missing lots of local potential keywords.
This will result in building irrelevant keywords in your account, leading to less engagement from your right audience. My recommendation here is to add one more step after using the keywords research tool which is to conduct manual keyword research to capture the real keywords that your target audience would engage with. This will help you to bridge the gap between automated keywords research and relevant target keywords.
Mastering the Arabic Google Ads
While the paid search and display is considered as one of the most effective tactics in reaching the Middle East customers, there is still a gap in the market when it comes to localization of the campaigns. Eventually, Google Ads doesn’t provide specific guidelines for the Arabic Ads and the performance teams and paid search specialists would need to expand their efforts by sharing the experience. Accordingly, this article discussed some of the main practices that could help in managing the Arabic Google Ads.
Hopefully, this helped you understand the uniqueness of the Arabic language when it comes to Google ads and PPC & SEM in general. Stay tuned! Many more tips on how to manage and optimize your Arabic Google Ads campaign are on the way.