I do almost exactly as Jonathan does, though I label files with date and description such as 2007-01-14 York Racecourse 017.CR2 and I also have all images in folders by date like this
2007 - 01 - January
2007 - 02 - February
2007 - 03 - March
and with subfolders like this in say Jan 07
2007 - 01 - 14 York Racecourse
2007 - 01 - 14 York Racecourse Spectators
2007 - 01 - 14 York Racecourse Race
2007 - 01 - 15 York City Centre
2007 - 01 - 15 York Minster
2007 - 01 - 15 Party
to contain say a 2 day visit to York. As Browsers/Dam Apps can be a bit tedious at wading through/rendering large folders of images. So by separating a single shoot into several smaller categories as in my fictional example above, it can make finding the image you want that bit quicker. You could contain all the different shots at York Racecourse into a single racecourse folder, which means you can view each folder individually or all images that day when using an App. that allows veiwing of subfolders too [Flat View]. This can be quicker at finding than Keywords searches, as they may also bring up too many less relevent results, if you can even remember the keywords needed.
One could separate work or personal images out into a second version of this or keep them together. That depends on your own way of shooting/thinking.
I use this structure as I can use any database on top of my file structure and not instead of it. This means I'm I'm not screwed if the DB corrupts or I have to change software packages. I don't assume that Aperture/Lightroom/Portfolio are going to be around in twenty years time, so I design the file structure, so any file browser can read them and the naming also make senses to people other than just myself.
Also notice Jonathan and I use dates and labels that can easily be read by humans. Way too many people recommend one to label images with some unintelligible nonsense like 070114_job217_012.
As for when you label, doing so with batch ingestion can work fine, if you want all the files to be labelled the same. But all too often I shoot a variety of different subjects on a single card, so that a generic label of entire card is simply useless. e.g.with documentary work and I also do film stills, where in a day you may shoot several setups with different locations/scenes and cast all on one card. So labelling them after ingesting will be much better.