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Assuming this is on-page copy and not a title tag, then I'd say you're fine.

Assuming your syntax is correct (I think it is, based on 301s I've done in the past), here are my tentative responses:

1. It's generally best to redirect to links that are as close to the original in terms of content.  If you don't have a potato mixers page, I'd suggest building one and pointing the old link to it.
2. The first line shouldn't override all the others.  You're saying the domain (i.e. the home page) should be pointed to home-appliances.  The other two redirects deal with different links.  So you should be okay.  However, htaccess is tricky, so as is always the case with 301s, test the heck out of 'em when you implement them.

Good luck!

If you're talking about enabling compression in htaccess, then I'd say absolutely.  Google has made it pretty clear that page speed is looked at as a signal.  I've used gzip in the past.  Use Google's page speed tool in Firebug.

So you inherited a dinosaur of a website and are expected to get organic traffic.  Oh, the humanity...

First off: yes, tableless CSS sites are definitely considered best practice.  They tend to be lighter overall (i.e. pages generally contain less code), meaning they load faster and Google can crawl them faster, both of which are search signals.  BITD Amazon's pages were crammed with nested tables.  Today, not so much - it's taken them some time and effort to get there, but a lot of their content is now table-free.

However, please understand that when you say "converting the ENTIRE website into Divs," you are ultimately talking redesign, with the potential hassle and expense that entails.  Is it worth it?  At the risk of sounding really indecisive: maybe, maybe not.  It depends on a range of quantifiable and subjective factors: how much content really needs to be rewritten, how long would it take, how competitive is the site at present, how old is the current design of the site, etc.

The wider issue here is on-site vs. off-site SEO.  On-site is still very important.  On-site by itself is not enough, which you seem to understand (hence, your question on link building).  However: without a good foundation through a properly optimized web presence, link building won't be as effective.

Here's what I'd recommend.  I did a static build of a site for a client - quick job, small site (i.e. less than 10 pages).  Around 6-12 months later, we moved the site into WordPress.  It was quick, painless, quite affordable to the client, and the client now has a blog and can update/add pages with no involvement from a web designer, which suits me just fine.  However, I had already optimized the site quite effectively beforehand, so it wasn't a big deal, and as I say, it was a small site.

In your case, if:

• the site is already well optimized (good title tags/meta descriptions, well written content)
• it has a good, attractive design
• it's a mature site (URLs have been indexed for a while)
• it isn't a crapload of pages that you would have to migrate

...then it might be worth the time and expense to move the site into a content management system.  I'm a huge fan of WordPress, but there are other open source systems out there that are perfectly acceptable.

Bottom line: for any major SEO campaign, I strongly believe you need the right foundation in place first in the form of a strong website.  Depending on your situation, it may or may not make sense to move it into a CMS.

Hope that helps.  

I think what you're really talking about is crafting an SEO strategy.  I'm a big fan of persona-driven strategy development.  Go here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-8step-seo-strategy-step-1-define-your-target-audience-and-their-needs

This is the first of eight posts from a former Yahoo Media on SEO strategy.  It's going to force you to carefully consider your target audience, do a lot of competitive research, think about content, etc.  Yes, it's a lot of reading, and a lot of effort.  It's worth it.  Trust me.

If it's a brand-new web presence, generally Google and Bing will discover and crawl it fairly quickly.  However, if you want to speed up the process, the quick and dirty way is to submit to Google and Bing here:

http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/

https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

You'll need to have logins with Google and Bing respectively.

However, the best way to do takes a bit more work, but is far more effective.  Validate your site in Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Center:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster/

Submit XML sitemaps with both engines.  Let things run their course, check back in a week or so, and you should be indexed.

If you have duplicate content across multiple web presences on the same server, then yes, you may have a problem.  It's likely best to go to some effort to differentiate your content and make sure each site is unique.

The quick-and-dirty solution may be to implement a 301 wildcard redirect for the domain and any pages on that domain.  However, that is definitely the ugly way to do it.  Can you tell us what editing platform you're using?  Is it an open source platform?  If so you may be able to find a plugin that will allow for manual 301 redirects.