Mobile and desktop surfers alike are turning to Google Maps to find local and sometimes nearby businesses. Optimizing your web pages for local search has become an extremely important part of the local marketing mix.

Claiming and building strong profiles in the local search directories is another must for the new local search habits.

Today’s post and accompanying video explains a bit of tweak that I suggest can make your Google Maps profile even more local search term friendly.

As shown in the video above, once you claim your Google Maps Profile (Go to the Google Local Business Center) you have the freedom to do lots of customization, including customizing the very important “category” listings, which Google relies very heavily upon to determine when to show your profile. You must choose one category suggested by Google, but are free to add up to four more that can contain city names as part of the category. In my opinion, Las Vegas plumber is a much stronger local category than just plumber.

Watch this quick video and then go strengthen up your profile.

Update: Interesting discussion on this topic here – thanks to @niftymarketing for pointing me to it. Grey area for sure, test and decide.