Typically, a sitemap is going to include every page on the site. As Francesca said, each sitemap can be up to 50K urls and if you need multiple sitemaps then you create a sitemap index that points to the rest of the sitemaps.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183668?hl=en

Of course, you can also use the moz's crawl test report at http://pro.moz.com/tools/crawl-test

You can use screamingfrog to create your sitemap.  You just need to license it for crawl more than 500 URI.

seoec,

How your content is cached in different data centers, will have a lot to do with the architecture of your site(s) and where they may be hosted.  CC TLD's may be the way for you to go but it does require an investment in the domains. You can also set up subdomain or us location specific sub folders to separate unique content for each market.  Each option has its own set of pros and cons.

Matt Cutts did a video that goes over the duplicate content issue on country code top level domains here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo and Rand did a white board Friday that covers your architectual options here  http://moz.com/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

I'd say that your idea is a good one strategically but it's not going to be quick and easy.

If it were me, I'd start not by revising anything on-page, but by working on building links back to your home page from content relating closely to "merchant services" and with anchor text that's somewhat thematically relevant to that. Once you've build up your domain and page authority to be somewhat equal to other sites that are ranking for your term, then you might revise your home page meta tags and content to take advantage of the new strength.  The reason I say I would go in that direction is because your home page likely isn't currently strong enough to rank for the new keyword (just by virtue of on-page changes) and it may not be strong enough to pass the strength that the internal "offshore merchant accounts" landing page would need to take up the slack created by the home page not ranking for that term any more.

The better the quality and relevance of the links to your homepage, the quicker the transition will take place in the search results once you make your on-page changes. Right now, your link profile is not terribly strong.

And when you're ready to make your on-page changes:

1. Go through your site and make sure all links with anchor text of "offshore merchant accounts" are revised to point to the internal page that deals with your offshore merchant account service.
2. Make sure that links pointing to your home page carry the anchor  text "merchant services" or variations of that.
3. Anchor text from your external links going to your homepage looks generally OK but where possible, you should work on making them variations and synonyms of "merchant services", rather than "offshore merchant accounts"

Sam, from an SEO standpoint, there's no need to jump through any hoops in order to get keyword into your URLs as the value that that brings is negligible and still decreasing. On the other hand, it can bring value in the form of click throughs once the result makes near the top of the the search results.

As far as the folders and URLs go, a URL that shows the directory (folder) but no page name is simply the default page for that directory.  Just as the /index.php isn't usually shown in the URL for a domiain's homepage (the default page for the domain), the /index.php is often not shown in the URL for the default page in a directory.

• http://moz.com/learn/seo/url
• http://moz.com/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls

Firstly, Matt Cutts has said that it's easier to start fresh with a new domain than trying to resurrect a banned domain.  http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021220.html.  Back in 2005, I picked up my domain at auction after it had dropped and able to clear of the penalty via a reinclusion request, but those pre-penguin days were different.   Secondly, redirecting links that had been pointing to a banned domain will be like playing with fire today and you won't have a clear idea of how hot they are until you get burned. I think if the price was low enough and you wanted by it and to try to salvage anything, to go for the domain name only and look to disavow all the links to the domain.  Emphasize you're a new owner with a clean record,  and hope for the best. I would spend minimal  time or effort on  content until I know the domain was cleared.