Are more pages with less content better for SEO than fewer pages with more content?

Question

I'm creating a WordPress website with 14 languages. I have FAQ's with about 12 categories and about 70 (so far) questions/answers in them. Since it is very painful process to create for each language / each category / each question a post (or page), I have to ask SEO masters what is better (before I start adding content):

1. To have each category with questions/answers on them, so one language / one category / one page - in total 12 * 14 languages = 168 pages with answers.

2. To have each question in category in each language a separate post/page, in total (70 questions + 12 category question lists) * 14 languages = 1148 pages.

Answer 1

I think a better approach is to think in term of user experience. You should organize your FAQ in order to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to browse, search and find answers. This will help your SEO. (I don't know enough about your content to tell which way works best for your visitors.)

Answer 2

Generally speaking, longer pages tend to perform better. This is likely because Google is increasingly using semantic analysis on the pages and a longer page is statistically more likely to contain the semantic phrases which Google considers relevant to the topic and to search intent.

A common practice however -- whether you subscribe to this SEO theory or not -- is that longer posts perform even better when linked to by shorter, supporting posts. In which case, both long and short posts are an important part of content strategy.