Solar SEO strategy

Most solar SEO work is fought on a results page that sells the enquiry before an installer sees it. Marketplaces hold the city and head terms, national leasing brands hold a page per market, and the tariff queries are where local installers still rank. If you also sell roofs, the storm pages belong to the roofing playbook.

• EnergySage

  energysage.comClaim it

  A marketplace owned by Schneider Electric since February 2022, where installers pay to participate, and whose local pages cover utilities as well as cities. Decide on it by cost per signed contract. Then out-publish it on the one thing it cannot hold: your own installations inside a named utility territory.

• SolarReviews

  solarreviews.comClaim it

  Reviews, city rankings, incentive pages and a calculator, and it sells the enquiry. Its own lead page defines Exclusive, Duo, Trio and Quad as a lead sold to one, two, three or four companies. Claim the profile, answer the reviews, and price any paid tier per signed contract.

• Solar.com

  solar.com

  A marketplace with some of the strongest lease-versus-buy content on the results page. It explains the choice in general. You can explain it for the contracts you actually sell, in the utility territories you actually serve, with the date you checked.

• Forbes Home, ConsumerAffairs, NerdWallet and EcoWatch

  forbes.com, consumeraffairs.com, nerdwallet.com, ecowatch.com

  Affiliate and lead-generation lists that own the best solar companies queries and name national brands. I would concede these. A regional installer does not win a national best-of query, and the effort belongs on pages those lists cannot write.

• National leasing brands

  palmetto.com, sunrun.com, tesla.com

  Programmatic city pages, market after market. Palmetto's Phoenix page, read on 18 September 2026, tells cash buyers the federal credit is gone and says its lease still qualifies for the commercial credit. That is the argument a local page has to answer, for the contracts you sell.

• DSIRE

  dsireusa.org

  The Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency, operated at North Carolina State University with Department of Energy funding. It is the incentive authority, so link to it rather than competing with it, and spend your own words on what a programme means for your contracts.

• Utilities and regulators

  cpuc.ca.gov, ladwp.com, srpnet.com

  They own the tariff queries at the source, and some publish installer lists. Link the exact tariff page from yours, use the name the bill uses, and describe any list you appear on in the utility's own words, because Texas now polices implied affiliation.

• Google Project Sunroof and the Solar API

  sunroof.withgoogle.com

  Project Sunroof still resolves as a client-rendered app, and the same rooftop data is sold as the Google Maps Platform Solar API, which powers many installer calculator widgets. So the widget on your site may share its data with the calculator microsites ranking above you.

Nobody searches for solar at seven in the morning with a broken system. The clusters below belong to a decision that takes months, and most of them fork on the contract or on the utility, which is where a national page has the least to say.

This is my reading of the rules as of 18 September 2026, not legal or tax advice, and net metering and solar contract law are moving in several states at once, so check your own. The electrician page covers deleting the dead credit; this page is about the one that moved to the leasing company, and the rules that reach a solar site directly.

A solar contract can run twenty years or more and is sold with money attached, so the reader is checking whether the numbers were set by somebody accountable. Every signal below is something a homeowner, a lender or a quality rater can verify.

• NABCEP certification named per installer, with the credential's name rather than a logo
• The contractor licence class in text, such as C-46 or C-10 in California, with the issuing board
• The Texas solar retailer registration number, once issued, from 1 September 2026
• Every savings figure labelled with its contract type, its assumptions and the date it was checked
• The utility named on every location page, with the tariff in force and the date it was read
• Warranty responsibility split by issuer: panel maker, inverter maker, your workmanship, monitoring
• Monitored production from your own installations, published by utility territory
• What happens to service if you stop trading, stated plainly

The order below starts with what the site already claims, not with keywords. A solar SEO strategy that builds city pages before the savings claims are audited publishes the same error once per city, and the error now depends on the contract rather than on the date.

1. 1

   Weeks 1-3

   Sort every claim by contract

   • List every savings, credit, certificate, upkeep and home-sale claim across pages, titles and calculator defaults
   • Mark each one true for cash, loan, lease or PPA, and rewrite any that names no contract
   • Check the FAQ markup and the calculator configuration for the credit, not only the copy
   • Retire programme-shaped titles and any utility logo strip
   • Put a review date on every lease credit claim

   You end up with
   A claims register by contract type, and no page implying a credit or an affiliation that does not exist

2. 2

   Weeks 4-6

   Map the utilities you serve

   • Map the service area to utility territories rather than to a city list
   • Find every city page that spans two utilities and plan the split
   • Collapse cloned state incentive pages for states you do not serve
   • Claim and correct the EnergySage and SolarReviews profiles
   • Set the business profile's service area to where you can actually connect

   You end up with
   A utility map, and a page plan built from it rather than from a list of towns

3. 3

   Weeks 7-10

   Build the utility pages and fix the calculator

   • Publish one page per utility, with the tariff under every name it goes by
   • Publish the calculator's assumptions as text beside the widget
   • In California, lead with the twelve-month, no-escalation estimate
   • Publish the lease-versus-buy page, naming who claims which credit
   • Link each incentive claim to DSIRE or to the regulator's own page

   You end up with
   Location pages that are right for every address on them, and savings figures a homeowner will recognise at signing

4. 4

   Weeks 11-13

   Serve the people who already own panels

   • Publish the orphaned-system page and one page per brand you service
   • Publish the battery retrofit page
   • Publish the home-sale pages for owned, financed and leased systems
   • Start publishing monitored production by utility
   • Report cost per signed contract by source, not cost per lead

   You end up with
   An owner audience the marketplaces do not serve, and a report measured in contracts

The defects here are mostly about where a number lives. Calculators run inside vendor iframes, the dead credit survives in markup and defaults nobody re-reads, and location pages are built from a city list rather than from a utility map.

• The calculator runs in a vendor iframe

  An afternoon, then one per utility

  Installer calculators are sold as embeds. Solar Estimator's is an iframe, OpenSolar's lead tool is a snippet or a popup, and several vendors sell calculators built on Google's Solar API. None of the result is in your HTML, and the vendor sets the rate, the escalator and the credit treatment.

  Publish the assumptions as text beside the widget, with a worked example for a typical roof in each utility territory. In California, lead that text with the twelve-month, no-escalation estimate.

• The dead credit survives in markup and defaults

  A day

  Copy reviews read the body. The credit also lives in title tags, hero banners, calculator defaults that still subtract it, and FAQPage JSON-LD answering yes. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026, but answer engines still read the markup.

  Crawl titles, meta descriptions, alt text, structured data and calculator settings as well as copy. Then rewrite by contract: remove the claim from purchase pages and keep a named, dated version on lease pages.

• City pages never name the utility

  A sprint

  The export tariff, the rate plan and most rebates attach to the utility territory. Phoenix addresses split between APS and SRP. In the Los Angeles area an address may be served by LADWP or by Southern California Edison, under different regimes, so a cloned city page is wrong for part of its own city.

  Name the utility in the title and the first paragraph, and split any page whose area spans two. Where one utility serves the whole town, say so and link its tariff page.

• Cloned state pages share one false sentence

  A week, then quarterly

  State incentive pages were often built from one template with the state name swapped and an identical federal paragraph, so every one of them became wrong in the same sentence on the same day.

  Consolidate the states you do not serve. Rewrite the ones you do around state and utility programmes, link each to DSIRE, and date every figure.

• Your trust content lives on a vendor's domain

  An hour to check

  OpenSolar's PROfile gives an installer a public URL with an editable slug carrying reviews, licences and team photos, and online proposals live on design-software URLs. Whether those profile pages are indexed is unconfirmed, and where they are, they duplicate your own.

  Keep the canonical version of every credential and review on your own domain. Search the vendor's domain for your company name, and if a profile is indexed, make sure it links back.

• The old dealer page is still live

  An afternoon per brand

  SunPower filed for Chapter 11 on 5 August 2024 and the brand has changed hands since. Former dealer sites still carry authorised-dealer pages, promising a relationship that no longer exists to owners who need service.

  Rewrite each one as a service page for existing owners of that brand: what you can service, what you cannot, and who now holds each warranty where you know.

The types below fit this industry specifically. Most of them earn no rich result on their own, which is worth knowing before anyone sells the work on that basis. What they do is describe the entity precisely, which matters for how search engines and answer engines resolve who you are.

• HomeAndConstructionBusiness

  The home page and each utility territory page

  Schema.org has no solar subtype, so this is the closest honest fit. The new part is areaServed: name the utility territories you connect in, not only towns. It earns no rich result. What it buys is an entity that says where your work is valid.

  HomeAndConstructionBusiness.jsonldCopy JSON-LD

  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "HomeAndConstructionBusiness",
    "@id": "https://[YOUR-DOMAIN]/#business",
    "name": "[COMPANY NAME]",
    "url": "https://[YOUR-DOMAIN]/",
    "logo": "https://[YOUR-DOMAIN]/[LOGO].png",
    "telephone": "[+1 000 000 0000]",
    "address": {
      "@type": "PostalAddress",
      "streetAddress": "[STREET]",
      "addressLocality": "[CITY]",
      "addressRegion": "[STATE]",
      "postalCode": "[ZIP]",
      "addressCountry": "US"
    },
    "areaServed": [
      {
        "@type": "Place",
        "name": "[UTILITY NAME] service territory, [STATE]"
      },
      {
        "@type": "Place",
        "name": "[SECOND UTILITY NAME] service territory, [STATE]"
      }
    ],
    "knowsAbout": [
      "[Solar installation]",
      "[Battery retrofits for existing systems]",
      "[Service for systems installed by other companies]"
    ],
    "sameAs": [
      "[BUSINESS PROFILE URL]",
      "[STATE LICENCE LOOKUP URL]"
    ]
  }

• Legislation

  Incentive and tariff pages, once per rule the page relies on

  A core schema.org type with a date and an in-force status, which is exactly what an incentive claim needs. No rich result. It tells an answer engine which rule the page relies on, and when a rule ends you change legislationLegalForce to NotInForce rather than deleting the claim silently.

  Legislation.jsonldCopy JSON-LD

  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "Legislation",
    "name": "[NAME OF THE RULE OR TARIFF]",
    "legislationIdentifier": "[OFFICIAL IDENTIFIER, e.g. A DECISION OR SECTION NUMBER]",
    "legislationDate": "[YYYY-MM-DD]",
    "legislationJurisdiction": "[STATE OR UTILITY TERRITORY]",
    "legislationLegalForce": "https://schema.org/InForce",
    "legislationPassedBy": {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "name": "[LEGISLATURE OR REGULATOR]"
    },
    "url": "[OFFICIAL SOURCE URL]"
  }

• Dataset

  A production data page for your own installations

  Monitored generation from systems you installed, by utility territory and month. Eligible for Google Dataset Search, not for a web rich result. It is the honest counterweight to a vendor calculator, because it is measured rather than modelled and nobody else holds it.

  Dataset.jsonldCopy JSON-LD

  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "Dataset",
    "name": "[COMPANY] monitored solar production by utility territory",
    "description": "[What was measured, how many systems, how they were chosen, and what is excluded]",
    "url": "https://[YOUR-DOMAIN]/production-data",
    "creator": {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "name": "[COMPANY NAME]",
      "url": "https://[YOUR-DOMAIN]/"
    },
    "license": "[LICENCE URL]",
    "dateModified": "[YYYY-MM-DD]",
    "temporalCoverage": "[YYYY-MM]/[YYYY-MM]",
    "spatialCoverage": {
      "@type": "Place",
      "name": "[UTILITY NAME] service territory, [STATE]"
    },
    "variableMeasured": [
      "[Monthly generation per kW installed]",
      "[Generation exported to the grid]"
    ],
    "distribution": {
      "@type": "DataDownload",
      "encodingFormat": "text/csv",
      "contentUrl": "https://[YOUR-DOMAIN]/production-data.csv"
    }
  }

• EducationalOccupationalCredential

  Team and about pages, through hasCredential on each Person

  NABCEP certification, the state licence class and, in Texas from 1 September 2026, the solar retailer registration. No rich result, but these are the checkable credentials in this trade, and markup keeps their names exact rather than paraphrased.

  EducationalOccupationalCredential.jsonldCopy JSON-LD

  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "[INSTALLER NAME]",
    "jobTitle": "[ROLE]",
    "worksFor": {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "name": "[COMPANY NAME]",
      "url": "https://[YOUR-DOMAIN]/"
    },
    "hasCredential": [
      {
        "@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
        "credentialCategory": "certification",
        "name": "[NABCEP CREDENTIAL NAME]",
        "recognizedBy": {
          "@type": "Organization",
          "name": "North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners",
          "url": "https://www.nabcep.org/"
        }
      },
      {
        "@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
        "credentialCategory": "license",
        "name": "[LICENCE CLASS, e.g. C-46 Solar Contractor]",
        "identifier": "[LICENCE NUMBER]",
        "recognizedBy": {
          "@type": "Organization",
          "name": "[ISSUING BOARD]"
        }
      }
    ]
  }

• Article with dateModified and citation

  Tariff, lease-versus-buy and incentive explainers

  For pages where the date is part of the claim. No special rich result. The citation list says which rules the page relies on, and dateModified is only honest if somebody re-read those rules on that day.

  Article with dateModified and citation.jsonldCopy JSON-LD

  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "[e.g. Leasing or buying solar in UTILITY territory]",
    "url": "https://[YOUR-DOMAIN]/[SLUG]",
    "datePublished": "[YYYY-MM-DD]",
    "dateModified": "[YYYY-MM-DD, THE DAY THE RULES WERE RE-READ]",
    "author": {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "[NAME]",
      "jobTitle": "[ROLE]"
    },
    "publisher": {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "name": "[COMPANY NAME]",
      "url": "https://[YOUR-DOMAIN]/"
    },
    "about": "[THE CONTRACT TYPE OR TARIFF THE PAGE COVERS]",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "Legislation",
        "name": "[RULE THE PAGE RELIES ON]",
        "legislationIdentifier": "[IDENTIFIER]",
        "url": "[OFFICIAL SOURCE URL]"
      }
    ]
  }

• FAQPage

  Every page that answers a credit question, as the audit target

  Google has not shown FAQ rich results since 7 May 2026, so this earns nothing in its results. It is here because the old credit answer hides in it: a page corrected in the copy can still say yes in its markup to every answer engine that reads it.

  FAQPage.jsonldCopy JSON-LD

  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "FAQPage",
    "mainEntity": [
      {
        "@type": "Question",
        "name": "[If I buy the system, do I get a federal tax credit?]",
        "acceptedAnswer": {
          "@type": "Answer",
          "text": "[For a system installed after 31 December 2025, no. Say what applies instead, and the date you checked.]"
        }
      },
      {
        "@type": "Question",
        "name": "[If I lease, who claims the credit?]",
        "acceptedAnswer": {
          "@type": "Answer",
          "text": "[The provider, where it qualifies. Name it, say what that means for the price, and give the review date.]"
        }
      },
      {
        "@type": "Question",
        "name": "[Which tariff applies at my address?]",
        "acceptedAnswer": {
          "@type": "Answer",
          "text": "[Name the utility, the tariff under every name it goes by, and link the utility's own page.]"
        }
      }
    ]
  }

These bands are editorial estimates for the work on this page, not quoted prices. What moves a solar installer up a tier is the number of utility territories served. Each one is a page set with its own tariff, and every savings figure on it needs a claims review before it ships.

Most of the first month costs nothing but a spreadsheet and a morning with whoever writes the contracts, because the problem is what the site already says rather than what it lacks.

1. 1

   Sort every savings sentence by the contract it is true for

   A morning

   A spreadsheet and a site: search

   One row per claim, one column each for cash, loan, lease and PPA. The first thing to look for is a credit claim true for one column and printed on every page.

2. 2

   Look for the credit where copy reviews never look

   Two hours

   View source on your top pages, plus Search Console's page report

   Titles, hero banners, calculator settings and FAQ markup. The copy may already be right while the structured data still answers yes to every assistant that reads it.

3. 3

   Write down which utility serves each town you cover

   Two hours

   Your utilities' published service territory maps

   The list decides your location pages. Expect a town that sits in two territories, and a page that currently explains the wrong tariff to some of its readers.

4. 4

   Claim and correct the marketplace profiles

   An hour each

   EnergySage and SolarReviews installer profiles

   They rank above you on your own city whether you engage or not. A claimed, accurate profile with answered reviews costs nothing; any paid tier gets judged later, per signed contract.

5. 5

   Point every incentive sentence at its source and date it

   An hour

   DSIRE and your state regulator's site

   Link the programme, write the date you checked beside it, and delete anything you cannot source. It is the cheapest credibility on the page.

6. 6

   Match the business profile to where you can connect

   Half an hour

   Google Business Profile

   Set the service area to the towns inside territories you actually work in, and describe each contract type you offer in the services list rather than just the word solar.

7. 7

   Write the page for owners whose installer has gone

   Half a day

   Your website editor

   Which brands you service, which warranties usually survive and who holds them, and what a diagnostic visit involves. Few installers answer this search at all.

Six jobs, two of them specific to selling one product under several contracts: keeping claims in step across a page set per utility, and watching results city by city, because a marketplace ranks differently in each.

• Keep one page per utility territory editable without a developer

  CloudCannonHeadless CMSRead the review

  Git-based editing suits a page set that changes together. When a tariff or a credit rule moves, the change is one reviewed edit across every page it touches rather than a morning of copying.

  Free routeYour existing CMS, with one strict template per utility

• Watch city-level results where marketplaces and leasing brands rank

  ValueSERPSEO APIRead the review

  The local results for the same query differ town by town inside one territory. Pulling them monthly for the towns you serve shows which marketplace or leasing brand you are actually up against in each.

  Free routeSearch Console, filtered by page and by query

• Check which incentives exist in each state you serve

  DSIREExternalVisit site

  The incentive authority. Link to it from every incentive claim rather than rewriting its tables, and spend your own words on what a programme means for your contracts.

  Free routeFree

• Model production the same way the California disclosure does

  NREL PVWattsExternalVisit site

  Resolution E-5364 names PVWatts for the solar-only generation estimate. Using it for the worked examples on your pages means the website and the contract start from the same model.

  Free routeFree

• Keep the local profile accurate by territory

  Google Business Profile

  Service area, contract types in the services list, and photographs of your own installations. It is the local half of the results page and it takes an hour a quarter.

  Free routeFree

• Tie every enquiry to a signed contract

  Your CRM, with the lead source kept through to signature

  The only way to compare a marketplace lead with an organic one. Without it, a report counts enquiries, and a lead sold to four installers looks as good as one sold to you alone.

  Free routeA spreadsheet, updated weekly

Everything below is meant to be filled in and used rather than read. Bodies are plain text, so what lands on your clipboard is exactly what you see, brackets and all.

SAVINGS CLAIMS AUDIT, BY CONTRACT
Company: [NAME]     Audited by: [NAME]     Date: [DATE]

Working tool, not legal or tax advice.

WHY THIS COMES FIRST
The same sentence can be true on a lease page and false on a
purchase page. Nothing else on the site can be planned until
every claim is sorted by the contract it is true for.

WHICH CONTRACTS YOU SELL
  [ ] Cash purchase
  [ ] Loan     Lender(s): [ ................................ ]
  [ ] Lease    Provider:  [ ................................ ]
  [ ] PPA      Provider:  [ ................................ ]

WHERE TO LOOK (not just the body copy)
  [ ] Page titles and meta descriptions
  [ ] Hero banners and image alt text
  [ ] Calculator defaults and settings
  [ ] FAQ markup (FAQPage JSON-LD)
  [ ] Ads, landing pages and email templates
  [ ] Marketplace and business profile descriptions

THE CLAIMS, ONE ROW EACH
Tick only the contracts the claim is TRUE for.

Claim                            Found on      Cash Loan Lease PPA
A federal tax credit applies     [ ......... ] [ ]  [ ]  [ ]   [ ]
You own the certificates         [ ......... ] [ ]  [ ]  [ ]   [ ]
Maintenance is included          [ ......... ] [ ]  [ ]  [ ]   [ ]
Adds value when you sell         [ ......... ] [ ]  [ ]  [ ]   [ ]
No upfront cost                  [ ......... ] [ ]  [ ]  [ ]   [ ]
Save $[X] over [N] years         [ ......... ] [ ]  [ ]  [ ]   [ ]
[ OTHER CLAIM ]                  [ ......... ] [ ]  [ ]  [ ]   [ ]

A row with any box empty must name its contract on the page.

THE FEDERAL CREDIT ROW, IN DETAIL
  Buyer (cash or loan), system installed after 31 December 2025:
    the 25D credit does not apply. Remove the claim.
  Lease or PPA: the provider may claim 48E on the system.
    [ ] Provider has confirmed its position in writing
    [ ] Page says the PROVIDER claims it, not the customer
    [ ] Review date set, no later than 31 December 2027
  Source: IRC 25D(h), 48E(e)(4) and 48E(i). Read on: [DATE]

LOAN PAGES
  [ ] Any dealer fee is included in the financed price, and the
      page does not suggest otherwise
  [ ] Down payment and monthly figures checked against
      Regulation Z advertising rules
  Minnesota's Attorney General sued four solar lenders on
  8 March 2024 alleging fees hidden in the financed price; the
  lenders deny it. Worth knowing before quoting a monthly figure.

AFFILIATION AND PROGRAMME LANGUAGE
  [ ] No title or heading uses free, programme, enrolment or
      government to describe what you sell
  [ ] No utility logo implies a relationship you do not have
  [ ] Texas pages checked against Occupations Code 1806.201
  Sources: 16 CFR 461; FTC solar guidance, 7 August 2024

CERTIFICATES
  [ ] No case study claims a client "runs on solar" where the
      certificates were sold (16 CFR 260.15(d))

RESULT
Claims found:                         [ ..... ]
True on every contract we sell:       [ ..... ]
Rewritten to name the contract:       [ ..... ]
Removed:                              [ ..... ]

SIGN OFF
Checked against the contracts by: [NAME, WHO WRITES THEM]
Date: [DATE]     Next review: [DATE, 3 MONTHS]

Everything below either answers a question that forks on the contract or on the utility, or serves somebody who already owns panels. The general solar explainers are written better by the marketplaces, and conceding them costs you nothing.

• A page per utility territory

  One per utility, re-read quarterly

  The unit a solar decision actually runs on. It carries the tariff under all its names, the towns inside the territory, and the systems you have connected on that network, which a national city page cannot.

• Lease versus buy, for the contracts you sell

  Once, reviewed each quarter

  The marketplaces answer it in general. Yours names the providers, who claims which credit, who holds the certificates and what happens at resale, with the date you checked.

• Selling a house with solar, by contract

  Three pages, once

  A searcher with a closing date and a question only ownership answers. Three short pages, for owned, financed and leased, beat one long page that hedges every sentence.

• Service for systems other companies installed

  One page, plus one per brand you service

  Owners whose installer has gone are searching with a problem and nobody to call. It is also the honest replacement for an old dealer page.

• Monitored production from your own installations

  Monthly, by utility

  Measured rather than modelled, and held by nobody else. Published by utility and month, it is the counterweight to every vendor calculator on the results page.

• The calculator's assumptions, written out

  Once per calculator, dated

  Rate, escalator, contract type, credit treatment and production model as text on the page. In California it is also where the twelve-month estimate goes first.

Measure per signed contract and split everything by contract type and by utility territory. A decision that takes months will never attribute cleanly, so say so in the report and let the business indicators, not the lead count, decide the budget.