Caucasus · Not an EU candidate
SEO audit for websites in Armenia
Armenia’s search market is shaped by a distinctive alphabet, a split between Eastern and Western Armenian, and a Russian and English layer on top. Those three facts drive most technical choices for a site aimed at Yerevan, Gyumri or the Armenian diaspora.
Below are the choices that trip sites up most often, followed by what the audit checks on an Armenian site.
Armenia at a glance
- Languages and hreflang codes
- Armenian (Eastern)
hy-AMOfficial language; Eastern Armenian is the standard in Armenia - Russian
ru-AMWidely used as an additional language in business and media - English
en-AMTechnology sector, tourism and international clients
- Armenian (Eastern)
- Script
- Armenian alphabet, with upper and lower case. Armenia uses the reformed orthography; the diaspora mostly keeps the traditional one.
- Domain
- .am is the country code. An Armenian-script .հայ also exists.
- Native name
- Հայաստան
- Currency
- Armenian dram (AMD)
- Calling code
+374- Postcode
- 4 digits
e.g. 0010 (central Yerevan) - EU, EEA and Schengen
- Not an EU, EEA or Schengen member and not an EU candidate as of this review. A Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement was signed in 2017, and Armenia’s parliament passed an EU integration law in March 2025.
Market notes for Armenia
Eastern or Western Armenian: hreflang can only say ‘Armenian’
Eastern Armenian is the official standard in Armenia. Western Armenian developed around Istanbul and is spoken mainly in the diaspora, where it is the medium of instruction in most Armenian-language schools. The two also differ in spelling: Armenia uses the reformed orthography introduced in the twentieth century, while diaspora communities generally keep the traditional one.
Google’s hreflang documentation asks for ISO 639-1 language codes. Armenian has one (hy), but Western Armenian has only an ISO 639-3 code (hyw), so you cannot mark the two variants differently in hreflang. If you publish both, give each its own folder, make the spelling conventions explicit in the copy, and use hy-AM only on pages written for people in Armenia.
Armenian letters in titles, slugs and structured data
The Armenian alphabet has capital and lower-case forms, so normal title-case conventions apply. Slugs follow the same rule as other non-Latin scripts: Google recommends percent-encoding non-ASCII characters in links and using words in your audience’s language, with transliterated words where relevant. Decide once whether slugs are Armenian or Latin and apply it to every language version.
Prices need extra care. The Armenian dram sign has been in Unicode for years but can be missing from fonts, which shows as an empty box in snippets and email previews. In structured data and feeds, use the ISO code AMD as the currency, and test the visible dram sign with the fonts your site actually loads.
The .am domain, and the radio-band reading
The letters ‘am’ also read as the radio band, so .am is used as a domain hack by sites that have nothing to do with Armenia. As far as we could find, Google has not listed .am among the vanity country-code domains it treats as generic, so expect a .am site to be treated as targeting Armenia. If your brand is global, a .com with an /hy/ folder avoids sending the wrong signal.
An Armenian-script domain, .հայ, exists as well. Like other internationalised domains it is converted to a Latin-letter form in many systems, which is one more reason to keep a plain Latin domain for email and print.
Armenian-language audiences outside Armenia
Eastern Armenian is also spoken by communities in Russia, Georgia and Iran, among other places. If those readers matter, the language-only code hy is more accurate than hy-AM, because the region part says ‘this page is for people in Armenia’. Use hy-AM for pages with Armenian prices, delivery, phone numbers and addresses, and plain hy for guides that serve every Armenian reader.
Local signals still matter for Armenian-market pages: an AMD price, a +374 number and a Yerevan address on the page are what confirm the market, whatever the domain.
Copy-ready examples for Armenia
Both snippets use placeholder data. Replace the domain, name, street, phone number, coordinates and prices with your own before you publish them.
hreflang tags
This set covers 3 versions (hy-AM, ru-AM, en-AM) plus an x-default. Put the same full set in the <head> of every language version, each page listing itself too; Google ignores pairs that do not link back.
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="hy-AM" href="https://example.am/hy/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ru-AM" href="https://example.am/ru/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-AM" href="https://example.am/en/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.am/en/" />LocalBusiness JSON-LD
The postcode follows the Armenia format (4 digits) and the telephone starts with +374. Use the most specific business type that fits, and keep every detail identical to your footer, contact page and map listing.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "ProfessionalService",
"name": "Example Studio Yerevan",
"url": "https://example.am/hy/",
"image": "https://example.am/images/storefront.jpg",
"telephone": "+374 10 000000",
"priceRange": "5000-30000 AMD",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "1 Example Street",
"addressLocality": "Yerevan",
"postalCode": "0010",
"addressCountry": "AM"
},
"geo": {
"@type": "GeoCoordinates",
"latitude": 40.1792,
"longitude": 44.4991
},
"openingHoursSpecification": [
{
"@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
"dayOfWeek": [
"Monday",
"Tuesday",
"Wednesday",
"Thursday",
"Friday"
],
"opens": "09:00",
"closes": "18:00"
}
]
}What the audit looks at
What the audit checks for Armenia
Language codes you can actually use
We flag hreflang values that Google does not support, such as three-letter codes for Western Armenian, and suggest hy or hy-AM instead.
UTF-8 and Armenian glyph rendering
The audit checks the charset declaration so Armenian text and the ligature և do not turn into question marks.
Organization schema with a +374 number
We validate that the telephone is in international format and that the four-digit postcode is stored as text so 0010 keeps its zeros.
Canonicals between /hy/, /ru/ and /en/
Each language folder should point to itself. A shared canonical to the English homepage would hide the Armenian pages.
Questions about SEO in Armenia
Does hreflang support Western Armenian?
Not directly. Google asks for ISO 639-1 codes, and Western Armenian (hyw) has only an ISO 639-3 code. Use hy for Armenian in general and hy-AM when the page is specifically for people in Armenia.
Should I use .am or .com for an Armenian business?
.am is a clear local signal for an Armenia-only business. If you serve several countries or the diaspora, a .com with an /hy/ folder keeps all links on one domain, and hreflang handles the targeting.
Is Armenia in the EU?
No, and as of this review it is not a candidate country. It has a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement with the EU from 2017, and its parliament passed an EU integration law in March 2025.
How should I write an Armenian postal code in schema?
As text, four digits, for example 0010 for central Yerevan. Storing it as a number drops the leading zeros.
Can I show prices with the dram sign?
You can, but test it: some fonts do not include the sign and show an empty box. In structured data use the ISO currency code AMD.
Need a hand with Armenia?
If your Armenia audit turns up work you would rather hand over, two teams stand behind this tool. Nomor (nomor.tech) is our software development company and Limi Creatives (limicreatives.com) is our marketing company. Send us your report and tell us which market you are working in.
Nomor
Our software development company. Nomor designs and builds the software and websites behind this tool, including the audit engine, the PDF report and the pages you are reading. It is the right place to start for custom development, performance work and technical fixes.
Limi Creatives
Our marketing company. Limi Creatives is a creative agency that runs SEO, paid ads, content, social media and video for brands. It is the right place to start when you want help turning audit findings into traffic and enquiries.