SEO on a macintosh created blog.....a learning experience

No but I feel it's important if you arent a web designer by trade you should probably pay someone to build you a site. IT's one of the most important places to advertise and bring business.

A few things here that I thought might help you.

What you witnessed is the initial "bump" that Google gives to new sites. When I started my outside blog it ranked first as well for a few different searches. Then after two weeks it was ranked about 13031236209 or basically dead last. Thats just how Google works. But if yours works like mine did after a while, maybe two months or so, Google sorted out the ranking and mine is back and actually pretty high for the most part.

The other thing about your site map. Google has a list of stuff here: http://code.google.com/p/sitemap-generators/wiki/SitemapGenerators

I think this is a good one here that is on that list http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

But I have read several articles that suggest you dont even have to have a sitemap. In fact I have read that sitemap generators often make mistakes and that the Google bots themselves are most likely programmed better to read your site. Unless you are trying to specifically prohibit the bots from indexing certain pages then you are best actually with no sitemap at all! I was shocked when I read this but it was from a very trusted site. I also checked with a few other sites and thought it was crazy but it seemed to be true. So I gave it a whirl and yes its true. You dont need one. Actually the sitemap has nothing to do with rankings. Its more or less for larger sites that for whatever reason need to manually change how Google sees the site.

Your domain is actually a pretty good one. To rank well you just have to keep adding content and linking to it and it should take off.

Mark, that is kind of weird. I also use my mac a lot to write posts and never a problem.

Eau Claire,

"To rank well you just have to keep adding content and linking to it and it should take off."

This is true if (and only if) the linking architecture of the site is solid. While it's also true that you don't necessarily need a sitemap, this is only the case if (again) the linking architecture is so solid as to never leave any doubt in the minds of the search crawlers.

Mark,

"But I'm usually a hands on kind of guy."

That's great, but consider these facts...

• A well designed and crafted "blog" for business purposes requires an estimated 130 hours to setup, configure, design, service, and deploy updates for the first 90 days it's in use. Add another 80 hours if you plan to integrate it into other search and discrover services.
• The act of blogging with typical blog tools requires about 3 to 10 hours per week, although, there are some tools that lessen this time requirement. On Average (as indicated in this study bloggers and the blogosphere) you're likely to spend a little more than 6.4 hours per week, or about 27 hours per month. One in four bloggers spends ten hours or more blogging each week. How many additional real estate deals can you process by reducing the time spent on blogging to perhaps 10 hours per month? ;-)
• The average business blog required just under $4k investment in hard dollars in 2008. While it may seem like it's "free", the data suggests otherwise.
• It's possible to benefit from the blogosphere and social media without becoming a "blogger". In fact, most marketing organizations achieve this by blending highly automated services with specific and well targeted human capital - it just requires technology and planning.