Technical SEO for Dhaka businesses has to handle things a lot of SEO tools were not designed for: Bangla script pages, customers who switch between Bangla, English and Banglish in a single search, and online shops that grew out of Facebook pages rather than websites. I work with Dhaka clients remotely from Karachi, and this page sets out the technical issues I focus on for the Bangladeshi market.
From Facebook page to website: what f-commerce sellers get wrong
A large part of Dhaka’s online retail started on Facebook. Clothing, cosmetics, gadgets and home décor sellers built followings through pages and groups, took orders by Messenger and collected payment on delivery or through mobile wallets such as bKash. When these businesses move to their own website, the site is often built quickly to look like a shop, with little thought for how Google will read it.
The problems I find most on those first websites:
- Product pages with no text. Product details are in the photo (price, sizes, fabric printed on the image) because that is how it worked on Facebook. Google cannot rank what it cannot read.
- Every product named the same way. Titles like “New Arrival 2024” or “Premium Collection” repeated across hundreds of products, so no page targets anything a buyer searches.
- “Order on Messenger” as the only action. That is fine for sales, but if product pages are never linked from crawlable category pages and contain little more than a button, Google treats them as thin.
- Cheap themes with heavy page builders. Low-cost WordPress and WooCommerce themes loaded with sliders, pop-ups and builder scripts that make mobile pages slow, even on 4G.
- Pages deleted when stock runs out. Out-of-stock products are removed, turning links shared on Facebook and WhatsApp into 404 errors.
Fixing these means proper category structures, text-based product details, Product structured data with price in Bangladeshi taka (BDT) and availability, a policy for sold-out items, and a lighter theme or a careful clean-up of the existing one.
Getting Bangla pages indexed and ranked properly
Many Dhaka customers search in Bangla, many in English, and many in Banglish (Bangla written in Latin letters). Each needs a different response, and only some of that is technical.
Bangla script pages
- Text must be real Unicode Bangla. Some older sites and design files still use legacy, non-Unicode Bangla fonts where the characters only look correct with that specific font installed. Search engines read those pages as meaningless Latin characters.
- Bangla pages should have their own URLs (for example a /bn/ subfolder), be marked with lang=”bn”, and point to the matching English URL with hreflang if the two say the same thing.
- Title tags and meta descriptions on Bangla pages should be written in Bangla too, not left in English by the CMS.
- Bangla web fonts can be large. I check that they are subset and loaded so text appears quickly and the layout does not jump.
Banglish searches
There is no hreflang code for Banglish, so markup cannot target it. If your customers search that way, the answer is content: using the phrases they type in product names, headings and FAQs. I flag where that matters during the audit and leave the copywriting decision to you.
Exporters in Gulshan, Banani and Tejgaon: ranking for buyers abroad
Dhaka is the centre of Bangladesh’s ready-made garment industry, with buying houses, manufacturers and sourcing agents concentrated in areas such as Gulshan, Banani, Uttara and Tejgaon. Their customers are brands and importers in Europe and North America, who search in English for specific product types, fabrics, compliance certifications and minimum order quantities.
Exporter websites have different technical needs from local retail:
- Speed for overseas visitors. A site hosted on a local server can be quick in Dhaka and slow in Germany or the US. A content delivery network in front of the site usually solves this.
- Product capability pages, not just a gallery. Each product category (knitwear, denim, woven tops, outerwear) needs a page describing what you make, your capacity, materials and processes, in text.
- Certification and compliance details on crawlable pages. Buyers check them early, and they are frequently hidden in images or PDFs.
- Organization structured data linking your company name, address, factory locations and official profiles, so search engines connect your brand to the right entity.
- Targeting. If you serve several export markets with different contacts or terms, separate sections with hreflang make sense. If the offer is the same everywhere, a single English site is simpler.
Checklist: a technical health check for a Dhaka website
- One version of the domain (.com.bd or .com, with or without www) that every other version redirects to
- HTTPS on every page, with no mixed-content warnings
- Google Search Console verified and an XML sitemap submitted
- Unicode Bangla text, correct lang attributes and hreflang where needed
- Mobile pages that load quickly on a mid-range Android phone on mobile data
- Category and product pages reachable through normal links, not only through search or filters
- Product, Organization or LocalBusiness structured data that matches the page content
- Google Business Profile set up for physical shops or showrooms, with the same name, address and phone number as the website
- Click-to-call and WhatsApp or Messenger buttons tracked as conversions
- No staging or test copies of the site in Google’s index
How I work with Dhaka clients
Dhaka is one hour ahead of Karachi, so our working days line up almost exactly and calls are easy to schedule. I do not have an office or team in Bangladesh; all work is remote, in English, with written findings your developer can follow step by step.
Unicode conversion, f-commerce migrations and exporter site builds all fall within my technical SEO work, and the case studies page shows how I write up results.
Questions Dhaka businesses ask
Most of our sales come from Facebook. Why invest in the website’s technical SEO?
Facebook reach depends on the platform’s algorithm and your ad budget. A website that ranks for product searches brings buyers who are already looking, and the visibility belongs to you. Many Dhaka sellers use both: Facebook for repeat customers and new launches, search for people who have never heard of the brand.
Should we make the whole site in Bangla, or keep it in English?
It depends on who buys from you. Local consumer brands often benefit from Bangla pages; exporters usually need English first. Many businesses need both, on separate URLs, linked with hreflang. I look at what your customers actually search before suggesting the extra build.
Our site uses an old Bangla font. Is that a problem?
If the font is a legacy non-Unicode one, yes. Search engines see the underlying characters, not the shapes the font draws, so the text is effectively unreadable to them. Converting the content to Unicode Bangla is one of the first fixes I recommend.
If your Dhaka website is not getting the search traffic your Facebook following suggests it should, a free audit is a sensible first step: I check the site against the list above and tell you what to fix first. Book it here.