For a Riyadh business, set up Google Ads with Arabic and English keywords in separate campaigns, target only the cities you can genuinely serve, send Arabic traffic to an Arabic landing page, and build a negative keyword list from the search terms report every week for the first two months. Structure matters more than bidding, and language separation matters more than either.
The short version
- Arabic and English keywords belong in separate campaigns, always.
- Target the cities your logistics can actually serve, then expand.
- Arabic clicks need an Arabic landing page, or you are paying for bounces.
- Expect to add several hundred negative keywords in month one.
Google in Saudi Arabia is a different animal to Google in Europe. The auction is bilingual, the intent shifts by language, and a national campaign built by someone who has never dealt with Saudi delivery logistics will spend a lot of money on customers you cannot serve.
This is the setup we would build for a business in Riyadh الرياض, in the order we would build it.
1. Separate Arabic and English from day one
Saudi search behaviour is genuinely bilingual. The same person will search in English for a technical product and in Arabic for a local service, sometimes within the same hour.
Those two behaviours have different costs, different competition and different conversion rates. Putting them in one campaign lets the cheaper language quietly absorb the budget while the more valuable one starves. Split them: one campaign for إعلانات جوجل style Arabic terms, one for English.
It also lets you point each one at the right landing page, which is the next thing that matters.
2. Match your targeting to your logistics
| Targeting choice | When it is right | When it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Riyadh only الرياض | Same-day or next-day delivery, or a physical location | You are leaving Jeddah and the Eastern Province on the table |
| Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam جدة والدمام | Reliable delivery to the three main hubs | Nothing, this is the sensible default for most stores |
| All of Saudi Arabia | National logistics that genuinely work everywhere | Complaints and refunds from regions you cannot serve on time |
| GCC-wide | You already run UAE or Kuwait properly | Currency, language and delivery all differ. Separate accounts, not one campaign |
Also set location targeting to presence rather than presence or interest, unless you specifically want people researching Saudi from abroad. The default setting quietly buys a lot of traffic from outside the Kingdom.
3. Build the campaign structure
For a typical Riyadh business, four campaigns is enough to start:
- Brand, exact match. Cheap, defensive, and it stops competitors bidding on your name. Keep it separate so it never flatters the rest of the account.
- Arabic commercial terms. Your main money keywords in Arabic, pointed at an Arabic page.
- English commercial terms. The same intents in English, pointed at an English page.
- Shopping or feed-only Performance Max, if you sell products. Brand excluded. The reasoning is the same as in the Performance Max guide.
Resist the urge to build twelve tightly themed ad groups on day one. On a new account you do not yet know what people actually search. Start broad enough to learn, then split what earns its own campaign.
4. The landing page decides your cost per click
This is the part that gets skipped and it is the part with the largest financial effect.
If your ad is in Arabic and your landing page is in English, three things happen. The visitor leaves, your conversion rate collapses, and Google lowers your quality score, which raises what you pay for every future click in that campaign. You get punished twice for the same mistake.
An Arabic landing page needs to be genuinely right-to-left, with Arabic-native copy, prices in riyals including VAT, and a phone number formatted the way Saudi customers expect. If you are on a local platform this is mostly handled for you, which is one of the arguments in the Salla, Zid and Shopify comparison.
5. Negatives, every week
Open the search terms report weekly for the first two months. You will be surprised by what you are paying for.
On new Saudi accounts the usual culprits are:
- Job seekers, in both languages. “vacancies”, “jobs”, وظائف
- Free-seekers. “free”, “download”, مجاني
- Other countries, especially UAE, Egypt and Kuwait terms leaking in
- Competitor brand names you did not intend to bid on
- Wholesale and bulk queries when you sell retail, or the reverse
Adding several hundred negatives in the first month is normal, not a sign that something went wrong. It is the campaign learning what you meant.
6. What to check, and how often
| Cadence | What you look at | What you are looking for |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | Search terms, negatives, budget pacing | Waste, and whether spend is actually landing |
| Weekly | Cost per conversion by campaign | Which campaign is carrying the account |
| Fortnightly | Ad copy performance | A weak variant dragging an ad group down |
| Monthly | Quality score on main keywords | Alignment between keyword, ad and page |
| Monthly | Blended return across all channels | Whether the business is actually better off |
Do not change bids and budgets daily. Every meaningful edit resets learning, and an account edited constantly never settles. This is the same discipline behind the 90 day plan we run on new accounts.
Your competition is not other advertisers. It is your own landing page and delivery promise.
We have seen Saudi accounts with excellent structure and a good cost per click convert at a third of what they should, purely because the page loaded slowly on mobile and did not say when the order would arrive. Fix the page before you optimise the bids. It is cheaper and it works faster.
Want your Riyadh account reviewed properly?
Send us access. We will come back with the wasted spend we can see in your search terms, whether your Arabic and English are fighting each other, and what we would restructure first.
Get a free Google Ads reviewSee how we run Google Shopping and PMax.
Frequently asked questions
Should I target all of Saudi Arabia or just Riyadh?
Start with the cities you can actually serve well. If delivery to Riyadh takes one day and to Abha takes five, advertising nationally buys you complaints. Add regions as your logistics and your data support them.
Should my Google Ads keywords be in Arabic or English?
Both, in separate campaigns. Saudi search behaviour is genuinely bilingual and the two behave differently on cost and intent. Keeping them separate lets you set budgets and bids for each rather than letting one subsidise the other.
Do I need an Arabic landing page?
If you are running Arabic keywords, yes. Sending Arabic search traffic to an English page is one of the fastest ways to pay for clicks that never convert, and it will drag your quality score down as well.
What is a good quality score in Saudi Arabia?
Seven or above on your main commercial keywords. Below five usually means the keyword, the ad copy and the landing page are not saying the same thing, and fixing that alignment lowers your cost per click faster than raising bids.
How do I stop wasting money on irrelevant searches?
Check the search terms report weekly for the first two months and add negatives aggressively. On a new Saudi account we often add several hundred negative keywords in the first month, most of them job seekers, free-seekers and other countries.