What is the best way to make a catalog of manufacturers?

Question

1C-Bitrix

There is a catalog of products (not a trade one, just an information one), it was necessary to make manufacturers for it, so that everyone would have their own picture, description and list of products.
I did not want to create a separate infoblock, since, nevertheless, this also applies to the catalog.
As a result:
Infoblock type: Catalog
Infoblocks: Products and services (product catalog itself, catalog) and Manufacturers (manufacturer).
The catalog at the root has its own physical folder catalog, well, the CNC.
For manufacturers, I created my own physical folder (manufacturer) from the root (for some reason, the CNC gave 404 inside the catalog folder).
Manufacturers infoblock CNC settings:
Information block page URL:

#SITE_DIR#/manufacturer/

Section Page URL:

#SITE_DIR#/manufacturer/#SECTION_CODE#/

URL of the detailed view page (I don't plan to use it):

#SITE_DIR#/manufacturer/#ELEMENT_CODE#/

I decided to make sections as manufacturers' pages, respectively, in the information block of the catalog I created the property "binding to sections" . Visually, when adding materials, the “binding to sections” property is more convenient, just a list of sections, without pop-up windows.
Displayed the Section List component ( catalog.section.list ) in the page code. As a result, the list was displayed correctly, but when trying to open some section - 404. If I use the complex component "Catalog", then there is no such problem.
Is that why catalog.section.list does not provide a section page, just a list?
The second question: which component would be better to form a list of products on the manufacturer's page: catalog elements, news elements or TOP elements? Naturally, before the output, I will place an array of filtering by the manufacturer's property.
The third question: if this is done on highload, then how to set the CNC and is it even possible to control page meta tags? I did not think about the speed of operation of a regular and highload infoblock, since up to 500 products themselves are planned in general. But still, the highload implementation is interesting.
Ps I apologize for uninteresting questions, but I myself could not find the answer to them.