you have 3 options for URL formatting. If you do not wan to show the language code in the directory, you can implement subdomains/other domains or use the language code as a URL parameter.
If the issue is that you do not want to se "en" as the subdirectory name but you want to use subdirectories...then you are looking at implementing a custom solution and I would directo you to contact a WPML Contractor to see if there is a way to hook/filter the rewrite rules to replace the language code with something else.
Alternatively, I suppose you could define a custom language with a new language code like "usa" that uses standard WordPress default locales....in this way the URL permalinks would include "usa" in the URL format instead of "en". But personally, I think it would be easier to implement subdomains. https://wpml.org/documentation/support/editing-wpmls-languages-table/
Actually, we do not need to replace the /en/ part with a custom language code but totally remove it, as there is no need to keep it and add further complexity (as the translated content for the same page has already totally different urls). We need the /en part only for the home page.
Could we use the parameter option instead and strip it somehow from the end of the url at all internal pages?
We can also consider the use of a subdomain, but is this preferable in terms of SEO?
I would like to ask which from the three supported options for URL formatting is better from your experience from a SEO perspective?
One more issue we are currently facing, we have translated some pages which are built with WP Bakery builder and have some theme-supported galleries.
Although the gallery block is present at the back end of the translated page, we can't see this in the front end part.
Can you please advice? I can also send you a site url but please note that we don't want to be public accessible.
1. URL Format
I am not aware of any other clients that have modified the permalink structure. In fact, from an SEO perspective, Google recommends the presence of language codes in the permalink (see image)
I am not an SEO expert but my understanding is that the best option is using language directories in terms of clarity and search engine friendliness for google: hidden link
2. For the pagebuilder issue, please open a new ticket for this issue as we try to focus on one topic per forum thread. Here we will handle the URL formatting questions.
