I want to get wide exposure for my blog and am using Blogger.com to
publish my blog on my own website's domain and server

I have several questions:

1. as far as getting picked up by the search engines, is it better to
publish on your own domain or use the blogger.com space
(http://YOURID.blogger.com)
2. is it better to leave the rss file for syndication with the
atom.xml name or change it to rss.xml (or some other name or does it
matter)
-2a. is the atom.xml format the best, or is there a better way to
format and syndicate the xml information?
3. is blogger.com a good way to pulbish a blog so your postings get
picked up for syndication and by the search engines... or is it better
to use a different service / script / site?
-3a. I've heard Google will spider and index Blogger.com blogs faster
than others... is this true?
4. will my content automatically get picked up for syndication, or are
there places I need to register my blog before other sites start
picking it up?
-4a. if "yes", where are the best places to register my blog and how do I do it?
5. is there any way to make blogger.com NOT show every posting ever
made on the main page, but just show today's article? I see how it
builds the archive on the side bar, but cannot figure out how to keep
it (if it's even possible) from having this big long page of every
single post I've ever made.
5. is there a good, better, or best way to set up the template for my
blog to encourage people to click over to my site after reading my
blog, or is the default site template supplied by blogger.com okay?