5.1 – hreflang and x-default

Without the hint a search engine sees two independent pages with similar content. With hreflang it sees two versions of one page and shows each searcher the one in their language.

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de-DE" href="https://example.org/de/notizen/kaffee" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://example.org/en/notes/coffee" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.org/en/notes/coffee" />

options:
  seo:
    hreflang: true      # default
    xDefault: default

No baseUrl, no hreflang

The declaration requires absolute addresses. With no baseUrl in the Quartz configuration the plugin leaves the lines out — it has nothing to build them from. That is the most common reason they are missing.

x-default

Says which version should apply when no language fits.

Value	Meaning
default	the site’s default language (default)
none	no declaration
a language code	exactly that language

For a site whose English version is the more complete one, xDefault: en makes sense even when the default language is German.

What gets linked

Only pages that have a link (chapter 3) and that survived the build. With the folder and suffix conventions the plugin can derive the partners from the slugs if the grouping found nothing.

A page without translations gets no hreflang lines — there is nothing to link.