5 Common Arabic Schema Issues & How to Fix Them for UAE E-commerce

Why Structured Data is the Bedrock of Arabic E-commerce SEO

Before we dive into the errors, let’s establish why this matters so much. Structured data, specifically Schema.org vocabulary, is a standardized language you add to your website’s code. It doesn’t change how the page looks to a user, but it provides explicit context to search crawlers. Instead of Google guessing that “د.إ 1,299” is a price, you use schema to state definitively: “This is an offer, the currency is AED, and the price is 1299.”

For an Arabic e-commerce site in the UAE, this has profound implications:

• Rich Snippets: This is the most visible benefit. Correct schema enables star ratings, pricing, and availability information to appear directly in the search results, dramatically increasing click-through rates (CTR).
• Google AI Overviews & Voice Search: Google’s AI-driven answers and voice assistants rely heavily on structured data to provide direct, factual answers. If a user in Dubai asks, “أين يمكنني شراء آيفون 15 بالتقسيط؟” (Where can I buy an iPhone 15 in installments?), Google will prioritize sites that have clearly structured their product, offer, and payment information.
• Enhanced Merchant Center Feeds: For businesses using Google Shopping, accurate schema on your product pages helps validate the data in your Merchant Center feed, reducing disapprovals and ensuring your ads are shown with correct information.
• Improved Entity Understanding: Proper schema helps Google build a stronger, more accurate profile of your brand, products, and services in its Knowledge Graph. This is foundational for long-term authority and topical relevance.

Ignoring schema is like asking a librarian to categorize a book with a blank cover. They might get it right by reading the whole thing, but it’s inefficient and prone to error. Giving Google structured data is like handing them a perfectly filled-out library card—it ensures fast, accurate indexing every time.

The Top 5 Arabic Schema Issues Sabotaging Your UAE Rankings

From our experience at KalaGrafix, the vast majority of schema problems on Arabic websites fall into a few key categories. These aren’t just minor validation warnings; they are fundamental communication breakdowns with Google. Here are the five most common culprits we encounter.

Issue 1: Mishandling Right-to-Left (RTL) Text Direction

This is arguably the most pervasive and damaging issue. While the visible text on your website is RTL, the underlying JSON-LD schema script is often generated without consideration for text directionality. This leads to broken or jumbled rich snippets where Arabic and Latin characters (like brand names or model numbers) are displayed in a confusing, left-to-right order.

How to Fix It:

The solution is conceptually simple but requires careful implementation. Within your JSON-LD, especially for properties like "name" and "description", you should encapsulate the Arabic text within Unicode control characters or, more robustly, ensure your CMS and schema generation tools are configured to handle RTL content properly. While JSON-LD itself doesn’t have a `dir=”rtl”` attribute like HTML, the content you feed into it must be correctly encoded.

Issue 2: Incorrect Currency and Pricing Formatting

In the UAE, prices are often displayed with the Arabic symbol “د.إ”. However, the Schema.org standard for the priceCurrency property requires the 3-letter ISO 4217 code. We frequently see sites either omitting the currency property or using the symbol instead of the code.

How to Fix It:

• priceCurrency: Always use "AED". Do not use “د.إ” or “Dirham”.
• price: This property should contain only the numerical value, without currency symbols or thousands separators. For example, a price of 1,299.50 should be represented as "1299.50".

Correct Example:

"offers": {
  "@type": "Offer",
  "priceCurrency": "AED",
  "price": "1299.50",
  ...
}
  

Issue 3: Vague or Missing Regional Targeting

An e-commerce site serving the UAE needs to tell Google explicitly that its products and offers are valid for customers in that country. Generic schema often misses this nuance, which is a missed opportunity to rank for location-based queries like “buy laptop in Dubai”.

How to Fix It:

Utilize the areaServed property within your Offer schema. You can specify the country directly. For an even more granular approach, you can use the shippingDetails property to define shipping rates and regions.

Correct Example:

"offers": {
  "@type": "Offer",
  "areaServed": {
    "@type": "Country",
    "name": "United Arab Emirates",
    "iso3166": "AE"
  },
  ...
}
  

Issue 4: Neglecting Arabic-Specific `PropertyValue` Pairs

Products in the MENA region often have specific attributes that aren’t common elsewhere, such as clothing sizes, electronic specifications (e.g., plug types), or Halal certifications. Many developers use generic schema, failing to mark up these crucial, region-specific details.

How to Fix It:

Use the additionalProperty property, which is of type PropertyValue, to define these custom attributes. This allows you to give Google specific name-value pairs that accurately describe your product for the local market.

Correct Example for a food product:

"additionalProperty": [{
  "@type": "PropertyValue",
  "name": "شهادة الحلال",
  "value": "نعم"
}]
  

Issue 5: Using Generic Schema Types Instead of Granular Ones

It’s easy to mark up every item on your store as a generic Product. However, Schema.org has a rich hierarchy of more specific types. Using Shoe instead of Product, or Vehicle instead of Product, gives search engines much more precise information, which is invaluable for long-tail search queries.

How to Fix It:

Audit your product categories and map them to the most specific Schema.org type available. A simple search on the official Schema.org website can reveal dozens of opportunities to be more precise. This simple change can significantly improve your relevance for niche product searches.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Auditing and Fixing Arabic Schema

Fixing these issues requires a systematic approach. At KalaGrafix, our process, refined by our founder Deepak Bisht, combines AI-powered tools with deep technical expertise to ensure nothing is missed. Here’s a simplified version of our workflow you can adapt.

Step 1: Comprehensive Crawl and Schema Extraction

Use tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to crawl your entire website. Configure the crawler to extract JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa. This gives you a complete inventory of all structured data currently implemented on your site, template by template.

Step 2: Validation Against Google’s Standards

Take the extracted schema from key pages (homepage, product pages, category pages) and run it through Google’s Schema Markup Validator and Rich Results Test. This will catch syntax errors and warnings. However, remember that validation tools won’t catch logical errors like incorrect currency codes or lack of RTL handling. This is where manual review is critical.

Step 3: Manual RTL and Localization Audit

This is the most crucial step for Arabic sites. Manually inspect the schema for each of the top 5 issues mentioned above. Check product names and descriptions for RTL integrity. Verify that all prices use “AED”. Ensure regional targeting is present. Look for opportunities to add specific PropertyValue pairs. This human-led, expert review is what separates a basic audit from a truly effective one.

Step 4: Prioritize and Implement Fixes

Create a prioritized list of fixes. Site-wide template issues (like incorrect currency in the product schema) should be the top priority. Work with your development team to deploy the updated JSON-LD scripts. For platforms like Shopify or Magento, this may involve editing theme files or using specialized apps. Consider using Google Tag Manager to dynamically inject or modify schema as a more agile solution.

Step 5: Monitor and Iterate

After deploying the fixes, use Google Search Console to monitor your performance. Check the “Enhancements” reports (e.g., Products, Review snippets) for any new errors or trends. A sudden increase in valid items is a great sign. Keep an eye on your CTR for key product pages to see if the improved rich snippets are having an impact.

The Future is Structured: AI Overviews and the Arabic Semantic Web

The push for accurate structured data goes far beyond just getting star ratings in search results. The entire trajectory of search, from Google’s AI Overviews to voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant, is built on a foundation of structured, machine-readable information.

When a user performs a complex, conversational search in Arabic, Google’s AI models are not “reading” your website in the traditional sense. They are querying the semantic web—a web of data—and your schema is your website’s primary contribution to that dataset. Websites with precise, comprehensive, and error-free structured data will be the primary sources for these AI-generated answers. Their content will be featured, their products recommended, and their brand established as an authority.

For businesses in the UAE, this presents a pivotal opportunity. By mastering Arabic schema now, you are not just optimizing for today’s search results; you are future-proofing your digital presence. You are ensuring that as search becomes more intelligent and conversational, your business is providing the clean, structured data that these new systems crave. This is how you build a lasting competitive advantage in the digital-first economy of the Middle East.