Every Arabic site owner hits the same question sooner or later: should the post URL be in Arabic, in transliteration, or in English? Google does not pick one for you, but its documentation is clear on the principles, and the core of it is this: use readable words in your audience’s language, separate them with hyphens, and keep one consistent, properly encoded form.
Why URLs matter, mostly for people
A URL is something readers see, copy into WhatsApp, and judge before they click. A clear path like /ar/arabic-coffee/ or its Arabic equivalent tells a reader what to expect. A path like /?p=4817 tells them nothing.
It helps to keep expectations realistic about search. Google’s SEO starter guide says that keywords in the domain name or URL path alone have hardly any effect. So a slug is not a ranking lever. It is a readability and consistency decision, and a bad setup can cause real technical problems like duplicate URLs.
What Google recommends
Google’s URL structure documentation gives a short set of principles:
- Readable words over long ID numbers, when possible.
- Words in your audience’s language, and transliterated words where that applies. For an Arabic audience, Arabic words and transliteration are both in line with this.
- Hyphens rather than underscores to separate words.
- Case matters. Google treats /APPLE and /apple as distinct URLs with their own content, so pick lowercase and stick to it for Latin characters.
- No fragments for content. Google says it generally does not support URL fragments, so do not use #sections to load different content.
The three options for an Arabic site compare like this. The examples are illustrative:
| Option | Example path | Trade off |
|---|---|---|
| Arabic words | /ar/قهوة-عربية/ | Matches the audience language; looks long and encoded when pasted in some apps |
| Transliteration | /ar/qahwa-arabiya/ | Short and ASCII only; spelling can be inconsistent between writers |
| English words | /ar/arabic-coffee/ | Easy to share everywhere; not in the reader’s language |
None of these is documented by Google as ranking better. Choose the one your readers and your team can keep consistent.
How percent encoding works
URLs travel over the web as ASCII characters. When a URL contains Arabic letters, each letter is converted to bytes and written with percent signs. That is why an Arabic slug looks readable in the address bar but turns into a long string when you paste it into some apps.
Google’s documentation asks you to use percent encoding in your links’ href attributes as needed, since characters outside the ASCII range should be encoded. Its own Arabic example is:
https://example.com/%D9%86%D8%B9%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B9/%D8%A8%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A9
That decodes to the path /نعناع/بقالة, and the encoded form is the one Google shows for the href. For our illustrative slug, the href would be /ar/%D9%82%D9%87%D9%88%D8%A9-%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%A9/. Most CMS platforms produce this automatically. What matters is that your internal links always use the same form, so you do not end up with several spellings of one address.
Step by step
- Decide on one slug style for the whole site: Arabic, transliteration or English. Write it in your editorial guidelines.
- Use language folders for bilingual sites, such as /ar/ and /en/, so each language has a clear home.
- Set a readable permalink structure. In WordPress, go to Settings, then Permalinks, and choose a structure based on the post name instead of plain IDs.
- Keep slugs short. A few meaningful words usually describe a post well. Drop filler words.
- Use hyphens only. No spaces, no underscores.
- Check your links. Make sure menus, sitemaps and internal links use the same encoded form.
- Change old slugs only with redirects. If you must change a URL, redirect the old address permanently to the new one, and follow Google’s documentation on site moves with URL changes when many URLs change at once.
Checklist
| Check | How | Tool |
|---|---|---|
| One slug style site wide | Compare ten recent posts | CMS post list |
| Readable words, no bare IDs | Open the permalink settings | WordPress Permalinks or CMS settings |
| Hyphens separate words | Scan slugs for spaces or underscores | Site crawler or CMS export |
| Consistent lowercase | Search for uppercase Latin letters in paths | Site crawler |
| Encoded form in href | View source on a page with Arabic links | Browser view source |
| No content behind fragments | Test that each section has its own URL if it needs one | Browser |
| Old URLs redirect | Request an old URL and check the response | URL Inspection or a header checker |
Common mistakes
- Changing slugs on old posts without permanent redirects. Readers and Google hit dead ends.
- Underscores or spaces in slugs. Google recommends hyphens.
- Mixed case URLs that create two addresses for one page.
- Using #fragments to load different content. Google generally does not support them for that.
- Expecting the slug to lift rankings on its own. Google says URL keywords alone have hardly any effect.
What caught my attention in Google’s page is that it treats transliteration as a legitimate option. For many Arabic sites that settles an old argument: pick what your readers recognise and stay consistent.
Sources
- Google Search Central, URL structure best practices, documentation page consulted 13 November 2025, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/url-structure
- Google Search Central, SEO starter guide, documentation page consulted 13 November 2025, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide
- Google Search Central, site moves with URL changes, documentation page consulted 13 November 2025, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/site-move-with-url-changes