Middle East Online

Middle East - Search Engines and the Online World

With over 200 million Arabic speakers in the Middle East and North Africa, Arabic is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world today.

The search marketing industry and all the major search engines, including Google, have until now failed to recognise this untapped marketplace and make the most of its potential, with no physical Middle East search engine presence.

This is changing, with Google recently opening new development offices in Cairo as well as a regional sales office in Dubai, UAE.

Online Marketing - Middle East

The Middle East has one of the fastest-growing Internet penetration rates in the world, with 26 million Arab users online today and growth rates of 1000% in countries such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Brands and agencies are beginning to take notice of this burgeoning audience, so online marketing for the Middle East must be taken seriously.

Dubai - the Regional Hub

Over the last few years, Dubai has become the fastest-growing and most dynamic city in the world, with a strong economy (30% of which is based on tourism) and some of the globe's most impressive developments such as the Dubai Mall, Burj Khalifa (the world's tallest building) and the new attraction Dubailand (which is still under construction).

We are perfectly placed in the middle of this high-growth city to oversee online marketing in the Middle East, including organic search engine optimisation.

As the Middle East has seen a massive rate of growth and diversification, so the online media advertising industry is beginning to grow exponentially. Social networking online remains an important ingredient, especially for the female audience due in part to cultural restrictions that still exist in countries like Saudi Arabia.

Sekari is uniquely placed to target Middle East search engines, providing SEO and online marketing for the Middle East region and the world.

At the end of 2006, online ad spend in the Middle East was $18,710,000. By the end of 2011, this is projected to reach $142,080,000. The 2006 ad spend broke down as follows:

• 79% went to regional websites.
• 21% was spent on international portal sites that target audiences within and outside the Arab Middle East region.
• 68% of total ad spend was placed on English language web pages.

Now is the perfect time to consider your online marketing Middle East strategy, such as Pay-per-click Advertising. Contact Sekari to find out more about how we can help promote your business online.

Middle East Latest SEO Topics

2008 has been a year of change in the UAE, and people have certainly been using Google to access information about these changes. The fastest-rising searches included inquiry into local events like Atlantis Dubai as well as national issues such as Emirates ID.

The economy, ever-changing, was also a topic of great interest in UAE, with top searches aimed at not only local issues like the economy of the UAE but also global events such as the price of gold.

Each of these lists shows the fastest-rising searches and most popular searches. The most popular searches mean these were the top searched terms of 2008. While the other categories (restaurants, concert tickets, vacation destinations and famous people) were the fastest-rising search terms that saw the largest spike in searches during 2008, as compared to 2007.