For many small businesses, search engine optimization focuses primarily on local SEO efforts. If someone caters only to a certain geographic area, then they want to be highly visible and effective at marketing to people within that area. 
The more data you have on your local service area, the better you can market to that area. In today's world of "big data," you can still get valuable information from one very old source of data: the U.S. Census.
Census Data and SEO
The U.S. Census does more than just count heads. Through various surveys, it tracks everything from age and race to industry sales and labor costs. And it does so not just on a national or state level; you can get data for an individual county, city or neighborhood--and sometimes even down to an individual city block.
So how can this data be used for local SEO? There are two main ways you can use it: determining where to target and understanding who you are targeting.
Where to Target
If you service a large enough area--such as an entire city or entire state--data from the Census can be useful in helping you determine which localities within that area you want to focus your local SEO efforts on.
For example, let's say you cover all of Houston, and your business sells high-end home furnishings that typically only go into million-dollar homes. Using Census information, you can determine which neighborhoods have the highest concentrations of such houses.
If you service a broader area or are looking at expanding into new markets, you can also find county-level competitive data. You can see how many businesses within your industry are located in each county and what the total industry sales were in the most recent survey year. You could then calculate which areas have the least competition or produce the most sales per location.
Who You Are Targeting
Within the geographic area you choose, you can get a picture of what the population is like. For example, you can see how many people within a neighborhood are over 65 years old or are Hispanic or have graduated high school. Such information can give you clues as to what people would be searching for online or what type of content you should present to them.
Accessing Census Data
All of this data is now available at no charge on the Census Bureau website. There are a few different ways to access it.
First, there is the American FactFinder database. This provides the most comprehensive information, pulling data from all of the different surveys conducted by the Census Bureau. That does make it somewhat complex, since the surveys occur in different years and allow different levels of geographic targeting.
For many searches, you can use the Interactive Population Map or the County Business and Demographics Map instead. The population map gives you the most basic Census data down to the city block level, while the other map allows you to search for county-level business data.
Exactly how useful Census data can be to your local SEO campaign depends on the specifics of your company and your ability to analyze the data and make inferences. If used well, the centuries-old Census can serve as a valuable, free resource for the Information Age.
* Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
