SEO questions from UAE businesses

Magnetic Keys' SEO starts from AED 12,000 a month, excluding VAT, and the price rises with site size, the number of languages and how much content gets published. That's our published price, not a market average. SEO is paid for in specialist hours, so when you compare quotes, ask each firm how many hours a month sit behind its number and who spends them.

Most sites see movement in 3 to 4 months, and competitive terms take 6 to 12 months. That's our published timing. Movement means pages getting indexed, impressions rising and the first clicks from searches that don't include your name, not a top position. A slow site, thin content or a crowded category pushes you toward the long end, so ask what will be fixed or published in the first 90 days.

No. Google decides rankings, and its Business Profile help page says you can't request or pay for a better local ranking. A guarantee is only worth what it covers, so read the small print: is it for a phrase nobody searches, your own company name, or a refund full of exclusions? Ask for committed work instead: named fixes, a publishing schedule, a monthly report on enquiries from search, and a clear way to leave.

SEO is worth it when people search for what you sell and a year of fees costs less than the gross profit from the customers it can bring you. Say a customer is worth AED 3,000 in gross profit and the fee is AED 12,000 a month: you'd need four extra customers a month just to break even. If that isn't realistic, start with the local basics: a complete Google Business Profile, a fast site and one clear page per service.

Start with Google Ads if you need enquiries this quarter, and with SEO if buyers already search for what you sell and you can wait: on our published timing, most sites see movement in 3 to 4 months. Test demand today by searching your service the way a customer would. Ads above the results mean other businesses think those searches are worth paying for. Ads stop when the budget stops; SEO pages keep earning without a fee per click.

SEO is one channel; digital marketing is the whole set: search, paid ads, social media, email, content and the tracking that joins them. SEO earns unpaid placement in search results and is one of the slowest channels to pay back. Hire an SEO specialist when search is your biggest source of customers, and a wider team when you need leads from several channels and one person accountable for the total.

Yes, if any of your buyers search in Arabic, and your own enquiries will tell you: count how many arrive in Arabic. Arabic SEO isn't English SEO translated. It needs its own keyword research, native writers, right-to-left templates, and separate Arabic pages linked to their English versions with hreflang tags. The UAE government portal names Arabic as the official language, and Google lists it as supported for AI Overviews and AI Mode here.

A freelancer suits a small site that needs an audit, a plan and someone to check the work. An agency suits a site that also needs content written every month, developer fixes and links earned, because one person rarely covers all of that. Either way, keep Google Search Console and Analytics in your own name, ask who writes the Arabic, and ask who covers the work when your contact is away.

A retainer should include technical fixes that actually ship, keyword research based on how UAE buyers really search, a content plan in English and Arabic, local SEO with a Google Business Profile, and a monthly report. Ours covers those five. Make the report show enquiries from search, not only rankings: a ranking report with no line to enquiries can't tell you whether the fee is paying for anything.

Local SEO is how a business shows up in Google Maps and local results when someone searches near them. Google says those results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity, which its help page explains under the heading prominence and ties to reviews and links from other sites, and that you can't pay for a better position. You need it if customers visit you or you serve a defined area.

An SEO audit checks whether Google can find, read and trust your site: crawling and indexing, speed, duplicate or missing pages, redirects, structured data, and whether your content answers what people search. It should end with a ranked fix list showing effort and impact, not a data dump. Our Growth Audit Sprint is a fixed AED 18,000 over two weeks and includes a technical and content SEO audit, alongside paid media and tracking reviews.

No. Google says E-E-A-T isn't itself a specific ranking factor, that trust is the most important part of it, and that quality rater data isn't used directly in ranking. Its systems use a mix of signals instead. In practice, show who stands behind a page: named authors, a real address, licence details, and sources for any number you quote.

Nobody can name one for you without looking at your site, and a ranked list is advertising unless it explains how the firms were chosen and who paid. Shortlist three and ask each the same questions: who does the work, who owns the accounts, how Arabic is handled, what they'd advise you not to spend money on, and what they would ship in the first 90 days.

Rarely. Below roughly AED 5,000 a month, our view is that the sums stop working: a competent UAE marketer costs more than that to employ, so the fee buys either junior hours with no oversight or one template run across many accounts. If your budget is small, ask happy customers for reviews, give every service its own page and fix whatever makes your site slow on a phone.

No. Google publishes guidance for site owners and tools such as Search Console, but it doesn't sell organic rankings; its paid placements are Google Ads, which are labelled as ads. Its Business Profile help page says you can't request or pay for a better local ranking. Treat any firm that claims a special line to Google as a red flag.