Technical
WordPress SEO for Arabic sites: settings, Yoast and Rank Math
Ilyes Massoudi7 min readThe short answer
WordPress works for Arabic SEO without many plugins, but its defaults are not set up for it. Five things decide: turning off 'discourage search engines' after development, a permalink structure by post name in Latin letters, one SEO plugin only (Yoast or Rank Math) for titles, descriptions and the sitemap, a translation plugin (WPML or Polylang) that generates reciprocal hreflang between Arabic and English, and a light theme that does not load four weights of an Arabic font. Plugins do not write the content or choose the keywords, and that is what decides the result.
Why WordPress, and why this article
Most small and medium websites in the Gulf run on WordPress, and most of their technical search problems repeat to the point of tedium: one setting left on, two conflicting plugins, a heavy theme, and an Arabic version tied to the English one incorrectly. This article walks through the settings in the order I check them, and says what you need and what you do not.
1. The setting that hides the whole site
Settings, Reading, “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. The developer enables it during the build and forgets to switch it off. The result is an entire site carrying a noindex tag that never appears in Google, while its owner looks for the cause in the content.
Check it now. If it is on, turn it off and request indexing in Search Console.
2. Permalinks
Settings, Permalinks, “Post name”. That is the correct option. The old default with numbers (?p=123) says nothing to the engine or the reader.
For an Arabic site: WordPress generates the URL from the post title, so it becomes Arabic and turns into long encoded strings when copied. The easiest fix is writing the slug by hand in Latin letters at publish time, or a small plugin that transliterates automatically. Pick one method and stick to it; changing URLs later needs redirects.
3. One SEO plugin
Yoast or Rank Math, one and not two. Together they generate duplicate and conflicting titles, schema and sitemaps. What you set in the plugin:
- The title and description template: do not leave the default. A page needs a title written for it; the “Page name | Site name” template is a fallback only.
- The sitemap: enable it from the plugin, submit its URL to Search Console, and disable the core WordPress sitemap so it does not duplicate.
- Schema: the Organization or Person type with your name, logo and accounts, and Article schema enabled. Make sure the name and description are in Arabic on Arabic pages if the plugin offers a field per language.
- What to exclude from indexing: tag pages, attachments, and the author archive on a single-author site. These produce dozens of thin pages.
- The focus keyword analysis: ignore its scores for Arabic. It is built for English and does not know that the definite and indefinite forms of a word are the same word.
4. Translation and hreflang
An Arabic and English WordPress site needs a translation plugin linking the two versions: Polylang or WPML are the best known. Their most important function is not translation but automatically generating reciprocal hreflang tags for every page and its counterpart.
What to verify after installing:
- View the source of an Arabic page and search for
hreflang: you should find three lines: ar, en and x-default. - The Arabic page carries
lang="ar"anddir="rtl"on the html tag. - The language switcher is visible to the visitor, and there is no automatic redirection by browser language.
- The Arabic version is written, not generated by the plugin’s machine translation. The plugin links; it does not write.
The common errors and their fixes are in the hreflang guide.
5. The theme and the font
The WordPress themes common in the Gulf are beautiful and heavy: a page builder, ten companion plugins, and a four-weight Arabic font loaded on every page. The result is an LCP above four seconds on mobile.
The rule: a light theme with native RTL support rather than a flipped stylesheet, two fonts in two weights in WOFF2, and one caching plugin. Details in the speed article. Before buying any theme, test its demo in PageSpeed Insights on mobile.
6. Plugins: less is more
Every plugin is an extra script and request. Ask of each one: what decision or function does it serve? Remove whatever cannot answer. The minimum for a commercial Arabic site:
| Function | One plugin | What you do not need |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Yoast or Rank Math | Both together, or a third plugin for schema |
| Translation | Polylang or WPML | A machine-translation plugin for the content |
| Speed | One caching plugin | Three competing optimisation plugins |
| Images | A compression and WebP conversion plugin | Heavy gallery plugins |
| Forms | A light forms plugin | A form builder with huge scripts |
| Security | One security plugin or host-level protection | Five security plugins |
7. What to check after every update
Theme and plugin updates sometimes reset settings to defaults. After any major update, three minutes: the discourage-indexing option, the hreflang line in the source of an Arabic page, and the homepage’s mobile speed.
The Arabic WordPress checklist
- The discourage-indexing option is off.
- Permalinks by post name, in Latin letters.
- One SEO plugin, with titles written for every important page.
- One sitemap submitted to Search Console.
- Tags, attachments and the author archive excluded from indexing.
- Reciprocal hreflang from the translation plugin, and a written Arabic version.
- A theme with RTL support, two fonts in two weights, and LCP under 2.5 seconds on mobile.
- Fewer than ten active plugins.
In the audit
The Digital Presence Audit crawls a WordPress site the way Google does, exposing the thin pages generated from tags and archives, the default titles, the missing hreflang and the heavy theme, and delivers a list for the developer ranked by impact. Most of its items are hours of work, not budget.