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Is Authorship used by Google as a ranking signal? (i.e., does it factor into search rankings?) Not for now, but it isn’t off the table. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-authorship-an-interview-with-googles-sagar-kamdar-part-1 I'd worry less about the short-term impact of authorship on rankings, and more about how you can use authorship to provide better access to your great content to your audience. That's not an argument against implementing authorship, but it's a re-framing of the reasons why you may or may not pursue your above-suggested course of action.

Too much ads on a page can affect a visitor's experience with your content. The presence of too many adverts may lead them to think that the content was meant solely to sell a product or a service instead of providing helpful information. I do agree that judging if a content has too much ad is relative. Perhaps you can do a survey and see if people feel that the website is too loaded with ads. I think "Are there excessive adverts on this page?" is one of the questions included in some of the efforts to replicate Google's Panda questionnaire. They were trying to see if high ad ratio was one of the signals being used to determine if a site's content is crappy. Many of the websites that have been hit by the first Panda update were loaded with adverts so proper attention to the amount of ads on your page may get more links.

You're right that people may not be fans of pest control like they would Pepsi, but you can create interesting content that people will share (worst infestation photos, top 10 most common pests, before/after). The goal with social will be to share and disseminate content, not direct Facebook fans for the company. I do agree that social should be a part of what should be a more dedicated website content strategy.

They get natural links very slowly.  Maybe 1 natural link every week. Double the content.  They you get more traffic and 2 natural links per week. Kick up the content with humor, video, great photos, useful stuff, higher quality... then you get 4 natural links per month.

I use the software a lot, and have never know it to be wrong, if you send me the url, (you can use private mesaging if you want) i am sure i will find it for you. if you look into it it will tell you where it is

One thing to consider with site structure is your analytics. Using a directory structure can give you some valuable information in your analytics -- you can look at a particular category of product in aggregate and see how it is doing, if it is set up properly. This post from LunaMetrics has some more ideas for setting up a GA-friendly site at http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2010/09/22/designing-google-analytics-friendly-site/.