yes that's all correct.

1. yes

2. yes, robots.txt works too - there are numerous ways to have the same effect. personal preference comes into it, plus one may be easier than another in your site/CMS. The reason I use noindex is that any page on my site could be accessed by https - so I prefer to dynamically throw noindex into any page that is accessed that way.

yes, generally you would noindex your about us, contact us, privacy, terms pages since these are rarely searched and in fact are so heavily linked to internally that they would rank well if indexed.

all search results should be noindexed - google wants to do the search

definitely NOT blog/category pages - these are your gold content!

I also noindex any URL accessed by https

Well, for a start, its very hard to see traffic figures for long-tail queries - by definition there are thousands of variations that may get only a search or two each month!  I'd focus on finding the keywords that make you money - the long tail will follow if you write good content and have a great natural link profile (varied anchor text)

Find the money keywords using adwords, then optimize your site for those.

Also try the "trick" query of adding a /* to the URL.

site:domain.com/*

I always compare these results with the plain site:domain.com - it's conjecture but I believe the /* is showing the really indexed pages (primary index) and the other shows supplemental index. No-one really knows of course, but I track the percentage of one over the other as a way of measuring google's trust of your site. The numbers are relative, not absolute, but I use a yardstick of 20-30% as being good.

YMMV

the safest route is to "noindex, follow" any page that is requested by https - this also squashes duplicate content when the user accesses non-cart pages using https...

"a lot more sites per visit" - I assume you mean pages per visit?

Don't rely on tricks like splitting the articles up over many short pages to increase your page views. You're only annoying your readers.

Instead focus on creating more and better content! There is no substitute for great topical content to keep visitors on your site!

In addition:

1. show related articles/products below the article
2. allow comments on your content
3. allow reviews on your content
4. add video and images to your content

I would pick hypenated over anything but .com. I would nt even use .net - .org is the only one I would consider for a true non-profit organisation.

I have some hyphenated domains for ecommerce websites, and have found no big problem with them personally.  Of course go with non-hyphenated .com's if you can!

Yes, I believe any http error response is a bad thing and could affect your ranking. Even 404's or 301's (when links on-site or in sitemap cause them) are cause for concern. You want to make your site as squeaky clean as possible.

I regularly use a site crawler to check my site, including sitemap/rss feeds, and fix any non-200 responses.

Acquiring links at a consistent rate is more sustainable; I've also heard (but cannot personally prove) that you should gradually grow links to make the link growth more natural - i.e. sudden spikes in growth may trigger some adverse reaction from SE's.

Personally, I think there are many natural reasons for spikes too - some event like a product launch, natural disaster or even something like being mentioned on the 10 o'clock news that I wouldnt worry about it.

But scaling up your link building sure makes it easier to build your systems and processes, adding more link building methods over time. You can't come out of the gate and expect to build a million backlinks in a month. At least not ones that will matter.

"a lot more sites per visit" - I assume you mean pages per visit?

Don't rely on tricks like splitting the articles up over many short pages to increase your page views. You're only annoying your readers.

Instead focus on creating more and better content! There is no substitute for great topical content to keep visitors on your site!

In addition:

1. show related articles/products below the article
2. allow comments on your content
3. allow reviews on your content
4. add video and images to your content

Also try the "trick" query of adding a /* to the URL.

site:domain.com/*

I always compare these results with the plain site:domain.com - it's conjecture but I believe the /* is showing the really indexed pages (primary index) and the other shows supplemental index. No-one really knows of course, but I track the percentage of one over the other as a way of measuring google's trust of your site. The numbers are relative, not absolute, but I use a yardstick of 20-30% as being good.

YMMV

Well, for a start, its very hard to see traffic figures for long-tail queries - by definition there are thousands of variations that may get only a search or two each month!  I'd focus on finding the keywords that make you money - the long tail will follow if you write good content and have a great natural link profile (varied anchor text)

Find the money keywords using adwords, then optimize your site for those.

Acquiring links at a consistent rate is more sustainable; I've also heard (but cannot personally prove) that you should gradually grow links to make the link growth more natural - i.e. sudden spikes in growth may trigger some adverse reaction from SE's.

Personally, I think there are many natural reasons for spikes too - some event like a product launch, natural disaster or even something like being mentioned on the 10 o'clock news that I wouldnt worry about it.

But scaling up your link building sure makes it easier to build your systems and processes, adding more link building methods over time. You can't come out of the gate and expect to build a million backlinks in a month. At least not ones that will matter.

yes, generally you would noindex your about us, contact us, privacy, terms pages since these are rarely searched and in fact are so heavily linked to internally that they would rank well if indexed.

all search results should be noindexed - google wants to do the search

definitely NOT blog/category pages - these are your gold content!

I also noindex any URL accessed by https