What do you think about the SEO industry in middle east? Is it really picking up?

there is a bad contest in keywords war so always the content is the king

Maybe not the best, but I can assure you they do know its importance and big names have their professional folks working around the clock.
Few to name: Bayt.com, Souq.com, Dubizzle.com, Jeeran.com, Masrawy.com If you go down for minor websites, you can do simple search (in Arabic) about SEO and you'll find thousands of forum threads talking about it which most their users are personal websites owners.
So, from being inside the industry (professionally and personally), I assure everyone in do know the importance (not necessarily know the science), and is ready to pay for the right person/business to provide him a high quality service.

Well focks, I don't think SEO industry is so strong in UAE region as most of the sites you mentioned Like Dubizzle, Yadiq and some other big names are working from Pakistan :)...
Their all IT and Online Marketing services is out sourced to their Pakistan Office.
Similarly their are many companies who out source their SEO and other works to India and Pakistan.
Well I am not physically visit UAE market...
so might be am wrong...
Any comment with some proof is requested if any one have some thing to share,.

I think they have a knowledge about it and know about it's importance, but they don't apply it, either in-house or out side, as it's expensive and needs a time to gain the resutls

Soon the winners will be those who have their business website's optimized in the Middle East, as most of them have not realized the Importance of SEO yet.

Hello, Let me tell you first that I am founder of seolhr.com the SEO company that has offices in both Dubai and Pakistan. I have to slightly disagree with Atif and I think seo market is one of the fastest growing market in middle east especially Dubai. I know many companies are outsourcing work to Pakistan and India but majority of the clients want Dubai based seo company to handle their project. Industry in defiantly strong local businesses are now taking online marketing seriously and investing in their websites.

Regards,

Mike

I think SEO industries are performing good in middle east and it's easy to get the keywords rank on the Middle east countries since there were no much competitors compared to US and UK. If you use the relevant keyword in your content then definitely we can expect the100% result with in few days. One more thing, compared to SEM, SEO is the one rocking in the Middle east countries.

Look... SEO doesn't mean anything to a business until it generates LEADS for them. SEO is a part of Internet Marketing. Not just SINGLE GOLDEN RULE of modern marketing strategy. If you carefully search through bayt or some other middle east based big job boards you would see medium to large scale companies are hiring DIGITAL MARKETING experts and the trend is really encouraging. It extensively indicates increasing thrust for online marketing experts. But to be honest you can't expect a job/project from a fortune company which is going to hire an SEO expert who don't know Social Media Marketing or even don't know how to do SWOT audit. So my answer is pretty straight forward. Let's emphasize on relevant high quality traffic driving rather concentrating on just SEO. Learn SEO, SMM, Email Marketing, Video Marketing, Viral Content Generation, B2B and B2C engagement methodologies, Digital stakeholder grooming, SWOT analysis, Trend Analysis, Crisis Management... You would surely see proposals to you. So the bottom line is, yes even middle eastern companies are understanding importance of digital marketing. But the agreement would be done between right candidate and the company where the right candidate is a Digital Marketing expert rather just knowing black/white/gray/blue/pink/maroon whatever colored SEO.

I am korean.korea is very developed about IT industry.fractcally i don't know about middle east SEO.

I am also wondering why the Middle Eastern companies are not so keen about using SEO to promote their companies.

There is a very large interest about SEO services in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly in major sectors like Media, marketing, tourism, training services, and information technology.