Yes, definitely dry salting should not be done all at once. I generally salt the top, wait 12 hours, then flip it and salt the other face. I do not worry about salting the sides - it just falls off, and salting just the faces seems to work just fine.
With any cheese, salt slows down or stops the action of the acidifying bacteria and helps to preserve the cheese. With some cheeses, though, the salt plays a very specific role in its affinage. In particular, the way salt can encourage or discourage certain mold or bacteria for surface-ripened cheeses can be very important. Blue cheese is another example - I'd have to look it up to remember the exact details, but as best I recall off the top of my head, when a blue cheese make is dry-salted, the high salt concentration on the exterior discourages development of blue on the rind, while allowing the blue in the interior to work - but then, as the salt works its way inward, it actually changes the form of the mold a way that is helpful for the ongoing development. Or something like that - as I said, I'd have to read back through Caldwell or such to remember the details.
The amount of salt can also play a significant role in Emmentaler and other gas-eyed cheeses. The proprionic shermanii bacteria that produces the eyes and the distinctive taste of a swiss cheese cannot tolerate too much salt, so generally these cheeses have a relatively low salt concentration. If you make a "swiss" cheese but add too much salt (brine too long), you will get a nice, basic, alpine cheese without any eyes - no matter how much PS you added to the milk!
I've never made chevre, not having access to goats' milk
, but I'm thinking it is just a basic cheese - no eyes, no surface ripening, no mold - is that right? If so, then I would guess you can go pretty much entirely by taste as far as the amount of salt.