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Howdy and welcome to the game!
Without going into too much detail I will give three basic guidelines.
1. As long as everyone is having fun, do not worry too much that your players are killing things fast and furious. Once you get more experience and the "bloom goes of the rose" you can work to make encounters tougher to increase player excitement.
2. I would not worry too much about random encounters until you have a few sessions under your belt. I tend to use them when there has not been enough combat in a session for my players and I tend to skip them when they have been doing a lot of fighting. Of course some modules count on random encounters... and when that is the case it usually has a write up for when and how to roll them.
3. The easiest way to make encounters tougher if you gave your players good ability scores or more magic items is to have monsters have better then average HP. 3/4 Max for the mooks and full for Sergent's and maybe 1.5X or double for bosses. You can also keep HP's as average and increase the number of bad guys. I do a mix of both to allow players to "flex their power" at times to mop the board on the weaker ones but make most fights last more then a round or two.
The key point is that if everyone is having fun, then you are doing it right!
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This is for the most part good advice -- If you're concerned about these sorts of things at the outset, I have a strong hunch you have the makings of a great GM.
Just grow into your power, more than anything -- and don't abuse it. Thazar has it right about random encounters -- read the signs so you know where an AP or other resource is relying on random encounters, but otherwise it's you who's calling the shots. Put in random encounters if you think you need to shake things up, or if you think it's "giving the people what they want" -- and feel free to scale it back if things have already been hot very recently or you have other objectives. If you're not sure yourself, you can always poll your players -- put evidence of creature activity, or tracks or evidence of lairs which may be ancillary to the main story or present objective, and see if the players run like moths to the flame. If you want to skip an encounter, you can just as soon roll it up but instead indicate that the monsters WERE there at one time -- perhaps it's just a cave with a big dire-bear crap in it... maybe its a broken barrow with scattered inanimate bones and signs of a struggle. That way, you're still populating a living world, but once in a while it's cool to know the monsters aren't at home waiting for the players to call, or that somebody else dealt with those pesky kobolds for a change.
Besides that:
1) get yourself as many random generation tools as you can, and hone your craft. The better you are at fleshing out details presented with random ingredients, the sooner you'll be a master chef.
Here's a great article about random dungeon generation:
http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/search/label/lmgm
and here's a site with all sorts of generators from maps to encounters to NPCs and more:
http://donjon.bin.sh/
(this site is likely not a hand-in-glove fit for pathfinder, but you can cobble much together and adapt it where you feel it may be limited)
2) don't be married to plot hooks and a rigid storyline. -- NO pre-arranged plot survives contact with your players. They will solve problems in ways you NEVER could have imagined. They will go UP when you give them every reason to go right. You will lovingly craft an adventure where they overthrow a corrupt governor, only to have them arrive in town, see everyone rioting - and decide they want to go ANYWHERE else, because they only have selling loot, buying gear, and drinking and wenching on their minds. Allow them to make those choices, but make sure they reap the consequences and rewards of those actions.
3) no invisible walls, no railroading -- You have near unlimited power as a GM... never take this as license to take away freedom or agency from your players. Never take control of them (except in those extreme and warranted situations like spell effects or monster abilities) and try as little as possible (whether you think they'll ever know the difference or not) to take their freedom of choice away from them. You'll cultivate your very own style, but let me tell you the best GMs never MAKE a player follow a storyline, and at worst either make the players THINK they made a decision of their own accord, or sufficiently motivated the players to want to stay on an intended track.
4) Cultivate a living world, and make sure that not everything going on it in has to do with the players. Have the party come into a bar RIGHT AFTER a bar brawl for a change. Have the party hear tell of events or activities outside of the realm of their control -- and (unless they really pursue it) let there be nothing else required of it. If you planned something big that isn't going to be realized because the players can't be pulled by the nose to get to it, let them forge their own destiny... (maybe it'll come up later -- and even if it doesn't, time you spent being creative that isn't directly applied is NOT wasted... you're become better and better at it, whether they drink at every river you lead them to or not.)
5) Don't be "Monty Haul" -- don't allow everything because you know it'll make a munchkin happy. Don't be over-liberal on the treasure. Don't cave in to your players just because you know what they want, you'll spoil some, you'll teach others that they don't need to try if they know you'll always "Deus Ex Machina" if they get into trouble. If they want some absurd combination of race/trait/skills make sure they have the backstory to back it up. If they want to get some obscure or overpowered feat on their next level, make the sages or monks who teach it hard to reach, or have costs associated, if you like. They'll enjoy their accomplishments more if they had to plan, or work, or be lucky to get them. By the same token, Don't be punishing or draw anything out simply because you think it needs to be a certain way or you planned for it to be a much bigger deal. You may be tempted to cook up that the big-boss at the end of your campaign was just a decoy when the party fighter takes a swing on him while he's monologing, gets initiative, crits and then decapitates him before he even stops talking s@%%... that would be a mistake, because it's moments like that your players will remember the longest and value the most. Reward ingenuity. Cultivate it.
6) Expect that your players are going to play the hero. This is normally a good thing, they ARE the heroes. Just don't get frustrated if at level one you put a frost giant in their path and they're itching to take a swing at it, when in your mind this would be a strong motivator to get them to flee. Caution the players, in or out of character, if a particular course of action is profoundly unwise. Also don't expect them to act the part of the prisoner or the tortured person -- you can employ all sorts of mechanics with fortitude saves, or intimidation checks, and all of that -- but few players want to convincingly play being terrified or helpless. In situations where you want or need the players to back off or dance to your tune -- Keep track of and help develop relationships your players have with contacts, friends, and people they care about in the game, (and give them reasons to care about them!) that way... instead of a strained and unconvincing interrogation of the player, have the beloved NPC stand to take the brunt of the hero's defiance should they not co-operate.
7) make sure you not only understand what the players are trying to do, but WHY they are trying to do it. This will help you keep things interesting, give you more time to think at critical moments on the fly, and to better understand what they want. If you know what they want, you can motivate them, and keep things interesting. If your players are asking you questions... they are giving you information. Use it!
8) always sprinkle in a few red herrings. Perhaps there are a few recurring characters that are never really connected to the plot, some people that keep popping up but they never even directly encounter. A couple of strange letters now and again, or other some such devices. These "loose ends" can be used to tie up an actual loose end later on at some future point. "Waitaminnit, GM... the only way THIS could have happened is if 'bad guy X' had been watching me for MONTHS, YEARS EVEN... or "how could he have POSSIBLY known about Y?" ... DUN DUN DUN -- The man in the leather hat steps from behind the curtain... "My agents have been watching you for a long time, and I've known you were a key player long before you even had fantasies of being important" ... And maybe the player's jaw drops, maybe a little mystery in his universe gets sewed up. Leave questions un-answered, but answer them eventually... or have plausible explanation resources laid, so when a "oops, you didn't think of that!" situation comes up, you can sew it closed and everyone's blinking in disbelief. Misdirection is good, and make sure that often enough a red herring really is just a red herring.
9) Lastly, get an idea before you really get into it what all your players AND characters ultimately want to accomplish. Some want to be stars in their own drama (or sitcom) and others want to roll buckets of dice, some of them want to do both. If you know what they want, you won't be trying to give them pears when they always wanted cheese, and you can try to provide them with objectives or accomplishments that encompass all their objectives (one character may want social status, one may want to be a leader of men, one may want to be filthy stinking rich -- in that situation I would ultimately put them in a situation where they can inherit a small keep, where the first player must substantiate a claim and a title, the second must restore the keep and train a garrison, and the third must turn the keep into a profitable trading post. Everyone's happy, everyone's fascinated. And on the long journey to rise to that level of responsibility, I have peppered all their paths with the opportunities, quests, and contacts they'd need to do all of this and care about it actual working out -- and see it in their minds taking shape long before they're finished.
Befor starting an (evenings) session try to sense the atmosphere.
If everyone is joking and fooling around, don't try to advance the plot because they will not take note of "subtle" plot clues. Just throw in a bar brawl, escaped circus elephant, a low level mob of cultist who want to open a gate to hell, necromancers who are delving on the site of ancient battlefield or everything at once. Just give the sorcerer some targets for his fireball and some mooks for the fighter. Let them have fun and test some odd-ball ideas for cults or monsters.
Use these less focused session for magic item shopping, introductions to NPCs such as shopkeepers, the local constable, local thugs, woodsmen, the Beasttotem of the local kobols, etc. Setting up hooks for later.
If the atmosphere is more serious, try to avoid time consuming combat, spead it up with diplomacy and intimidate checks versus the NPC leaders. Have conversations which reveal motivations why the NPCS joined "the dark side". This will make character-building for the PCs and will call slumbering friction of ethics of PCs to the foreground. That just means more role-playing and less dice rolling.
What every you do, always try to introduce a few NPC nobodies with names but no levels. The players (not PCs) will get attached to the NPCs. Each Hero needs an audience. Feed their ego by saving villages and cities and besting monsters, next give them the devils choice of which beloved NPC to save when danger comes visiting town. Let them become attached to a place or organization by building a history of their own actions.
Annoy your players with NPCs without skills and spells but with real and legal authority and power: give them a constable to hate because he follows the book and will not tolerate vigilantes and law-breaking not even for the better good. Let the major be empathic, friendly but always postponing decision making until it becomes irrelevant.
A trick I stole from an other GM: have a just-capable undercover agent get in trouble while investigating a situation of national importance.
If the PCs saved him a few times, they get a NPC to love-and-hate and a link to a governmental organization for future adventures. And when they see this NPC they know they better intercept him before he causes trouble, again.
I was thinking of having the head priest kill the NPC (who happens to be a priest as well under the head priest) that my players have grown to like, but I am not sure if that would be a good idea or not.
That's not a great idea. Think of... reading a book where your favorite character is killed off. It's not exciting, just disappointing. You lose something from the game by doing that.
If anything, think of having them taken captive or needing some sort of magic or potion to restore them and the quest is to get it. That puts them in peril, but doesn't remove them from your game.
Also, avoid adding AC to monsters, especially at low levels where the PCs can do very little about the difference in AC (whether lowering it or adding to attack bonus).
I'm GMing a Pathfinder AP for the first time as well (Jade Regent) and I have to say that, while it may seem harsh at first, limiting your players to 20 point buy will make things much easier on you. The APs are designed with 20 point buy in mind, and while you seem to be doing a good job of increasing the enemies abilities without significantly throwing off balance, I think that having to change every fight will become an increasingly daunting task.
Of course my opinion has been tainted by a former GM (back in the 3.5 days) who thought she could scale fights to high stats appropriately, with the result of totally random fight outcomes, such as us killing a red dragon in a surprise round, or getting party wiped by a 7 troll ambush. In any case, ever since we told her she couldn't GM anymore, my group has been using a realistic point buy, and fights have been much more balanced.