Local SEO checklist for solar installers

What to take away

• Nobody can promise a ranking position. Anyone who does is selling something. What can be done is to make the accurate, useful, and checkable information about your company available and consistent.
• Organize the site around service areas and utility territories, because that is how a homeowner's situation actually differs and it is what you genuinely know.
• The pages that earn attention in this trade are the ones that answer the questions a homeowner cannot get answered elsewhere: what the local permit process looks like, how long the utility takes, and what a roof has to be like before an array goes on it.
• Everything you publish still has to be accurate. A page that implies a saving or an incentive amount is an advertising problem regardless of how it ranks.

What can and cannot be promised

Search systems are not published rulebooks and they change. Google's own guidance on improving your local ranking describes what its systems take into account, in Google's own words, and that is the closest thing to an authority available for its product. Treat it as a description of one company's system rather than as a set of universal rules.

What follows is a checklist of things that are true, useful to a homeowner, and within your control. Whether they move a ranking is not something anyone can guarantee.

The business listing

• Business name exactly as it appears on your license and your contracts, with nothing appended
• Address and service area set to where you actually work, not to where you would like to work
• Hours accurate, including how out-of-hours contact is handled
• Categories chosen for what you do rather than for what you might do
• Phone number that a person answers during stated hours
• License number displayed where your state requires it
• Photographs of your own work, your own crew, and your own vehicles
• Description that says what you install and what you do not

Consistency is the point. The same name, address, and phone number everywhere your company appears, and every appearance updated when any of them changes.

Service area pages that are actually about the area

A page per town with the name swapped is obvious to a reader and useless. A page per area that says something true about that area is a different thing.

• Which building department serves this area, and what its residential solar submittal expects
• Which utility serves it, and what its interconnection process involves
• The roof types common in the area, and what each means for attachment
• Anything local that changes the job: historic districts, homeowner association review, coastal or wind considerations, snow load
• Your own recent experience of timelines here, stated as your experience

That last item is the one competitors cannot copy, and it is the one a homeowner most wants. Keep it current, and say when it was last updated.

Utility territory pages

Grouping by utility rather than by town is unusual and it matches how the job actually differs. A homeowner two streets from a service boundary has a different process from their neighbor.

• Which utility, and its own interconnection standard as the authority
• What the application involves and who submits it
• Whether contractors must register with that utility
• Any equipment requirement the standard imposes
• Your own median time from submission to permission to operate in that territory

State plainly that the utility's own published standard governs and that timelines change. You are describing your experience, not making a promise about theirs.

The pages that answer real questions

• What a site survey checks, and why an array cannot be quoted without one
• What happens if the roof needs work first
• What a service panel has to have for the system to connect
• What the stages are between signing and switching on, and who controls each
• What your workmanship warranty covers, and who honors the manufacturer warranties
• Who pays for labor on a warranty replacement

These are the questions homeowners ask and cannot find honestly answered. Answering them is worth more than any number of near-identical town pages.

Reviews

• A single point in the process where every customer is asked, chosen deliberately
• The same request wording for everyone
• Responses to reviews, including the critical ones, written calmly
• No selection of who gets asked based on how they are likely to respond
• Any incentive or connection disclosed

The Federal Trade Commission's guidance on soliciting and paying for online reviews is explicit that requests should go to genuine customers without selecting only those likely to be positive, and that incentives, connections, or paid placement must not create a false or misleading picture.

The best moment to ask in this trade is after permission to operate rather than on install day, because that is when the customer has experienced the whole process, including the weeks of waiting that most of a review is really about.

Page type	What only you can supply	What goes stale
Business listing	Your license number, your own photographs	Hours, service area, phone
Service area page	The building department's submittal expectations, local roof types	Review times
Utility territory page	Your median days from submission to permission to operate	Everything, whenever the utility changes its process
Question pages	What your survey checks and what your warranty covers	Warranty terms, if you change suppliers

What must not appear on any page

• No stated saving, because it depends on future rates and consumption
• No incentive amount or percentage, because federal residential credits are administered by the Internal Revenue Service and depend on the customer's tax position, and state and utility programs come from the state energy office and the utility
• No production guarantee stated casually
• No superlative you cannot substantiate
• No claim about a credential you do not hold

What you may say about your license and credentials is regulated in some states by the contractor board, and the licensing and compliance guide for solar contractors explains how to find out what applies.

The technical basics

• Pages load quickly on a phone, because that is where the searches happen
• Contact method visible without scrolling
• Every page says which areas you serve
• Nothing important locked inside an image
• A clear route from any page to booking a survey

What to write about, when you run out of ideas

The material that works is the material you have and nobody else does: what your survey checks, what your crew carries and why, what your quality checks catch, and what your own timelines have been.

The operating measures behind that are in the service quality guide for solar owners. The way scope confusion drives most price objections, and how to write about it honestly, is in the pricing and profit guide for solar contractors. The equipment and method detail that gives a page something specific to say is in the equipment and setup guide for solar crews. And the arithmetic that tells you whether any of this is producing installed jobs rather than leads is in the marketing and growth guide for solar owners.

Reviewing the checklist

Quarterly. The items that go stale fastest are the timeline claims, because building department review times and utility processing times both move. A page stating a timeline from two years ago is worse than one stating no timeline at all.

Common questions

How many service area pages should I have?

As many as you have something true to say about. One good page beats ten near-identical ones, and the near-identical ones are visible as such to a reader.

Should I hire someone to do this?

You can, but the material has to come from you. Nobody outside your company knows your median days to permission to operate or what your survey refuses.

How long before any of this shows an effect?

Unknown, and anyone who gives you a timeframe is guessing. Judge it on the leads that reach survey, not on positions.

What about a page targeting a town I do not serve?

Do not. It brings leads you cannot install, it wastes your survey capacity, and a service area you do not actually cover is a claim that is not true.