Jennifer:  Thanks!  My first goal was to just get a blog up -- now that I have a healthy number of posts, comments and incoming links, I am now going to focus on SEO.  I did my own test recently, trying to move to the top for "waterfront" and it worked quite well.  I published a Word document with all active waterfront listings, since Google can index Word documents and most PDF's (unless they are a scan -- Google can read and index Word or other documents converted to PDF), wondering if Google would give a little more preference to a indexed document and it appears that it does.  I don't know how sticky it will ultimately be though.  Actually, I think that the linking to the document using a keyword rich post is what helped establish its authority with Google.

Ocean County Homes:  I find it much easier to write a blog for a smaller community than a much larger one.  Since Annapolis is already one of my favorite cities, it is much easier for me to do.  I am always in Annapolis.  This is actually my first experience with Google Sitemaps -- TypePad has the feature built into their blogging platform -- all I had to do was click a box saying that I wanted it to submit and continuously updated a Sitemap to Google.

Chris Ann:  Thanks!  I am talking about an outside blog...my Active Rain always shows up great on Google, but I am trying to establish myself using other blogs, too.  Currently, in addition to my Active Rain blog, I have a blog on my web site, as well as the new Annapolis Homes and Happenings.  With TypePad, I can manage multiple blogs with their own domains from one control panel, so I hope to be launching more focused blogs in the future.

Seth:  I am thinking that it does.  Plus, Google probably thinks that if a content publisher even bothers with a Google Sitemap than it may be a more authoritative site.  If that is indeed the case, then more "spammy" sites will start using them for better placement and Google will have to stop the favoritism.  Then again, I have no idea if it even helps with SERP placement -- I am just suspecting it does.  If anything, I don't have to wait around for the Google bot -- the index is updated as soon as I hit publish.