The fastest way to under-perform in a second language is to write the content in the first language, then hand it to a translator. Translation preserves meaning. It does not preserve search behaviour, and search behaviour is what SEO is actually optimising for.
Search intent shifts across languages
Arabic-speaking users searching for a property, a service or a product often phrase the query differently than a direct translation would suggest. Different modifiers, different question structures, sometimes an entirely different primary term for the same thing. Keyword research has to be run natively in each language, from scratch, not derived from the English list.
Technical set-up carries as much weight as the copy
Hreflang tags, canonical structure and URL patterns for each language version need to be correct before content quality can matter. Search engines need to know that the Arabic and English pages are equivalent, and they get confused, with real ranking consequences, when that signal is inconsistent or missing.
On a multi-language listings portal, fixing hreflang and schema markup alongside a from-scratch Arabic keyword strategy moved average position from 10.0 to 7.2 in a single quarter. The content team had already been "doing SEO" for months before that fix. The technical layer was the part actually holding it back.