Entering the Turkish market: an SEO guide for UK and US brands

Türkiye is a mobile-first, e-commerce-driven market where shoppers expect to pay in lira, often in instalments. For UK and US brands the SEO fundamentals are familiar: Google dominates, and the work is research, structure, content and authority. What changes is the language, the trust signals and the competition from marketplaces, and that’s where launches tend to go wrong.

The search landscape

Google is by far the dominant search engine in Türkiye, and most searching happens on mobile. Yandex has a small share: setting up Yandex Webmaster and IndexNow costs little, but your plan should be built around Google. Our Türkiye market page explains how we approach it.

The bigger difference is who you’re competing with. For product searches, the first page is often crowded with marketplaces such as Trendyol, Hepsiburada and Amazon.com.tr. You won’t outrank them for every generic product query, and you don’t need to. Win the searches where a brand site is the better answer: your brand and product names, categories you know better than anyone, buying guides, comparisons and after-sales questions. Decide early whether you’ll also sell on marketplaces, because the answer changes which queries your own site needs to win.

Language: research in Turkish, don’t translate

Translated English keywords are a poor guide to how people search in Turkish. Start keyword research from scratch, with a native speaker, using Turkish seed terms and Turkish competitors.

• Suffixes multiply variants. Turkish is agglutinative, so one root takes many endings. “Ayakkabı” (shoe) becomes “ayakkabılar”, “kadın ayakkabısı”, “ayakkabı fiyatları” and “İstanbul’da ayakkabıcı”. Group variants by intent and write naturally, rather than building a page for every form.
• Not everyone types Turkish characters. Many people search for “kadin ayakkabi” instead of “kadın ayakkabı”, out of habit or because of their keyboard. Check both spellings in your research, because volumes and results can differ, but write correct Turkish on the page.
• Localise with native writers. A translation keeps the English structure. A native writer rewrites for Turkish readers, with a deliberate choice between the formal “siz” and the informal “sen”, local examples, EU sizes, day-first dates (14.04.2026) and the decimal comma (2,5 kg).

Translated vs localised

✕ Translated

• English keywords translated word for word
• Prices converted from pounds or dollars
• UK delivery and returns terms
• One-off card payment, no instalments
• English reviews and press logos

✓ Localised

• Keywords researched in Turkish from scratch
• Prices in lira, with KDV included
• Delivery times and returns written for Türkiye
• Instalment options where you can offer them
• Turkish reviews and Turkish coverage

Structure, pricing and payment

For most brands, the right structure is a /tr/ subfolder on the main domain. It shares the authority your site has already earned, and there’s one site to maintain. A .com.tr domain makes sense when you have a Turkish entity, a local team and the budget to build a second site’s authority from scratch, and it comes with its own registration rules.

Which structure to use for Türkiye

Option	When it fits	Verdict
/tr/ subfolder on your main domain	Most brands: shared authority and one site to maintain	Default
.com.tr domain	A Turkish entity, a local team and budget to build authority from scratch	Sometimes
tr. subdomain	Only when your platform forces a separate install	Rarely
URL parameter such as ?lang=tr	Google doesn’t recommend it, and it’s harder to manage	Avoid
Language set by cookie or a translation widget	Google sees one URL in one language	Avoid

Use tr-TR in hreflang if you target Türkiye specifically, or tr if the pages serve Turkish speakers wherever they are, and make the annotations reciprocal with every English version. Our list of common hreflang mistakes covers what usually goes wrong. Use Turkish words in your URLs, written without diacritics (/tr/kadin-ayakkabi/), so they stay readable when shared. Getting this structure right once is the heart of our international SEO work, because every later market depends on it.

Show prices in Turkish lira with KDV (VAT) included: that’s what shoppers expect, and Turkish price-labelling rules define the sale price as the price including all taxes. Expect people to look for taksit, paying by card in instalments, and show the options on product pages where your payment provider and product category allow it. The number of instalments is regulated and varies by category, so check before you promise it.

Trust signals Turkish shoppers look for

• Local contact details, if they’re real. A Turkish address or phone number helps, but only if it’s genuinely yours and someone answers in Turkish.
• Turkish reviews. Collect reviews from Turkish customers, in Turkish, and respond to complaints in public. Many shoppers check complaint platforms such as Şikayetvar before buying from a brand they don’t know.
• KVKK compliance. Personal data in Türkiye falls under KVKK (Law No. 6698). Publish a Turkish privacy notice (aydınlatma metni) and ask for cookie consent in line with the KVKK Authority’s cookie guidance, which expects explicit consent before non-essential cookies are set.
• Delivery and returns. State delivery times, costs and carriers, explain how returns work, and mention the 14-day right of withdrawal (cayma hakkı) for distance sales. Have the pre-contract information and distance sales contract that Turkish consumer law requires checked by a local adviser.

Digital PR in Turkish

Authority has to be earned in the market too. Links and mentions from Turkish news sites, trade publications and associations show Turkish readers that you’re established locally, and they’re the most relevant links you can earn for Turkish searches. Pitch in Turkish, with Turkish data and a spokesperson who can give interviews in Turkish. English-language coverage still helps your brand, but it rarely reaches the Turkish journalists and readers you need.

Measuring the launch

Set up measurement before launch, so you have a baseline:

• In Search Console, add the /tr/ folder as its own URL-prefix property, or filter the Performance report by country and page.
• In GA4, send the currency code with every purchase so lira revenue is converted correctly, and compare Turkish landing pages with the rest of the site.
• Remember that consent banners mean GA4 only sees visitors who accept analytics cookies.
• Track marketplace sales alongside your own, since some shoppers may find you on your site and buy elsewhere.

The rules from measuring SEO in GA4 and Search Console apply here too: compare trends rather than totals, split branded from non-branded queries, and report by page type.

Before you launch in Türkiye

• ✓Turkish keyword research done from scratch
• ✓Pages written or edited by native Turkish writers
• ✓Reciprocal hreflang between /tr/ and every English version
• ✓Prices in lira with KDV, plus instalment options
• ✓Turkish privacy notice and KVKK-compliant cookie consent
• ✓Delivery, returns and withdrawal terms for Türkiye
• ✓Search Console and GA4 reporting Türkiye separately
• ✓Turkish PR targets and story ideas ready

Working in the other direction? Our playbook for taking a Turkish brand into UK search covers the same ground from the Turkish side.

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Planning a launch in Türkiye? Talk to our Turkish-speaking team before you translate a single page.