Solar SEO for the homeowner comparing three bids

What does solar marketing involve?

California’s advice to anyone buying solar is to slow down. Its consumer guide tells homeowners to check the installer’s license, get bids from at least three providers, compare them and ask questions before signing anything. Every one of those steps sends a buyer back to search. Solar SEO is the work of being found at each of them, and solar marketing covers the whole path, from the first page a buyer reads to the call that books a site visit.

What we would build for an installer falls into three parts, with a fourth we leave to others:

• The website: pages built around the questions California tells buyers to ask, covered below and on our Web Design page.
• Search: pages for each system and financing option, local search, and a monthly check of when AI answers mention you. Our SEO page covers the service.
• Software: a CRM for a long sale, quotes, e-sign forms and a customer portal, built for one installer. See Custom Software.
• Paid ads: those stay with an ads agency or your own staff, since we don’t run paid search or social campaigns.

Our Industries page explains how we work across every sector we cover.

Which rules shape what a solar website can say?

In California, a handful of rules decide what an installer’s website, quotes and salespeople have to say. Installers in other states answer to their own state’s rules, and their pages should follow those instead.

The disclosure documents come before the contract

State law has the Contractors State License Board (CSLB), working with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), produce a solar energy system disclosure document that the company gives the buyer before a sale, financing or lease is completed (Business and Professions Code section 7169). It is printed on the front or cover page of every solar contract, in boldface 16-point type, and shows the total cost and payments, financing included, where to send complaints and the right to cancel. The CPUC adds that the documents include a one-year bill savings estimate, and that the cover page and the supporting information form must both go to the utility for an interconnection application to count as complete.

That sets the order for a website. The savings figure belongs on the state’s form, worked out from its standardized inputs, and the pages explain how the estimate works instead of printing a number of their own.

The consumer guide belongs at first contact

The CPUC recommends that providers hand out its Solar Consumer Protection Guide at their first contact with a potential customer. Version 4 was published in 2025, and interconnection applications with contracts signed on or after December 15, 2026 must include it. In the PG&E, SCE, SDG&E, Bear Valley Electric Service, PacifiCorp and Liberty service areas, customers initial and sign the guide, and they must be given time to read it first. A site can link the current version from its quote and contact pages, so the guide reaches a buyer early.

The license number, on every page

The CSLB wants a contractor’s license number in all advertising, including any website that solicits business. The CPUC’s guide tells buyers to check that number before signing: it must be active and in the C-46 (Solar Contractor), C-10 (Electrical Contractor) or B (General Building Contractor) classification, and after a phone or door-to-door pitch the buyer should also ask for the salesperson’s home improvement salesperson (HIS) registration number. So the license number goes in the footer of every page, next to the business name it was issued under.

Claims the CPUC calls false

The guide names sales lines that should end a conversation: that solar costs the buyer nothing, that the buyer will never pay an electricity bill again, and that time is running out to sign on a tablet. We keep every page clear of them, in any wording, because the buyers who read the guide will recognize them.

The language of the sale

Section 7169 also requires the contract and the disclosure document to be written in the language principally used in the sales presentation, or in the print or digital marketing material given to the buyer. The CPUC says providers should give the guide in the language in which a customer was first contacted, and it publishes the guide in several languages, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog among them. Pages in another language make sense only where the installer can also sell and contract in it.

How does net billing change what a solar page should say?

Since April 15, 2023, customers of PG&E, SCE and SDG&E who apply to connect solar take service on the net billing tariff, under CPUC decision D.22-12-056. The utilities call it the Solar Billing Plan, and the CPUC’s guide page notes it is also known as NEM 3. Power used at home still offsets the bill. Power sent to the grid is credited at a rate reflecting its value to the grid, which the CPUC says is usually lower than the retail rate but can rise above it on late summer evenings. Bills are due monthly, and the original customer keeps the tariff for nine years.

Batteries matter more under these rules. The CPUC says customers get the most from net billing by pairing storage with solar, so they can use or export stored energy in the high-value hours, and nearly 70 percent of net billing customers had paired batteries with their solar by the end of 2024. Sizing has a ceiling too: a system can be sized above the past 12 months of use, up to 150 percent of it, only with an attestation that use will grow.

For a site, that means three changes:

• Retire the old net metering pages: the earlier tariffs are closed to new enrollments, so a page that explains savings by their rules describes terms a new customer can’t get.
• Give batteries their own pages: the CPUC itself points to storage as the way to get the most from net billing, so a battery deserves more than a line on the panels page.
• Leave the numbers to the documents: the pages explain how credits and monthly bills work, and the bill savings figure stays on the state’s disclosure form.

What should solar website design include?

Solar website design starts from the CPUC’s list of questions a buyer should ask before signing, and answers them before the buyer has to. Web design for solar companies, as we would approach it, puts the answers where buyers look:

• Company facts, as you confirm them: license numbers for the company and its installers, whether salespeople are employees, whether installs are subcontracted, and how long you’ve been in business and how many systems you’ve installed.
• A page per system and financing option: panels, batteries, and each of a cash or loan purchase, lease, power purchase agreement or PACE that you offer, described in the terms its contract uses.
• Proof from your own installs: photos and write-ups of your own jobs, references customers have agreed to give, and NABCEP certification where your installers hold it, which the CPUC’s guide calls a good sign.
• A quote form that starts a design: the questions in the FAQ below, so a designer starts from the roof and the usage, not a round of phone tag.
• The build underneath: Astro or Next.js, structured data for each page, GA4, Search Console and Bing set up at launch, and redirects in place when an older site is rebuilt.

Solar sits close to roofing, and our roofing page covers what a roofer’s site needs. HVAC and cleaning companies sell in different ways again, and their pages explain how. Replacing an existing solar site rather than starting over? Our website redesign page walks through how a rebuild runs.

How do homeowners compare solar installers online?

The CPUC’s guide gives buyers several ways to find installers: the CSLB’s license search by city and classification, neighbors who had solar installed at least a year ago, online review sites, a county contractors association, and DGStats, a publicly funded site that lists providers and recent installation costs by ZIP code (costs the CPUC notes aren’t verified). It also tells them to compare reviews on a few sites, since some sites may not be neutral.

Each of those checks is a place a buyer meets the installer’s name, so the name should match everywhere: the CSLB record, the Business Profile, the website and the review sites. Google asks for a profile under the business’s real-world name, as used on its signage, website and stationery. It also counts distance among its three main local factors, so an installer based near the buyer starts with something a distant brand lacks, and a town page earns its place when it shows installs in that town. Our local SEO and Google Business Profile pages cover that work.

What does solar SEO involve each month?

Solar SEO runs on a calendar. Each week we check the site. Through the month we correct page titles, descriptions and structured data, ask search engines to re-read pages that changed, and fold together posts that cover the same ground. New pages come from what buyers ask: a page for each system or battery option, articles each month on net billing, roofs and financing, and town pages once demand and installs there back them up. Links have to be earned, and none are bought. Every month we also check whether and how AI answers mention the installer, alongside our GEO work, which makes a business easier for AI answers to find, read and cite.

On the last day of each month you get a one-page report that starts with leads, and each quarter we look back at what worked. We do not guarantee search rankings, traffic, or uninterrupted uptime. Cost depends on the territory and the systems you sell. Our SEO pricing and website design cost pages give the market’s ranges, and your own figure comes with the proposal.

What should you ask a solar SEO company?

Google’s Search Central page, Do you need an SEO?, is a fair place to start. It suggests checking references, choosing someone who is interested in your business, granting only read access to Search Console during an audit, and remembering that you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire. It also says Google never accepts money to include or rank sites, and puts the rest plainly: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” Our guide on how to choose a web design company covers the general questions. An installer should add these:

• Who writes the savings numbers: the answer should be the state’s form, worked out from its standardized inputs, never a figure the agency comes up with.
• Whether they know the paperwork: they should know the disclosure documents, the consumer guide and its current version, and the license and HIS registration rules.
• How they would word financing: each option should read the way its contract does, including who owns the system.
• What they would never write: the list should include a no-cost system, an end to electricity bills and a deadline to sign.
• What the report leads with: it should open with leads, before rankings or traffic.

What software can a solar installer run behind its website?

A solar sale runs through many steps: a site visit, a design, a bid, the state’s documents, financing, the install and, last, the utility’s written approval to turn the system on. Where those steps live in spreadsheets and inboxes, we would build software for the one installer:

• A CRM for a long sale: every lead, visit, design and bid in one place, with follow-ups that don’t rely on anyone’s memory.
• Quotes and e-sign forms: built from your own pricing and kept beside the state’s disclosure documents, never in place of them. The CPUC tells contractors not to modify the PDF fields of those documents and requires the supporting information form to be typewritten.
• A customer portal: where a buyer can see which stage the project has reached, from design to the utility’s approval.
• Lead triage: form and site leads sorted by utility, roof and battery interest before anyone calls back.

Each one is bespoke, built for a single installer in its own repository and run around how your team already sells. Our Custom Software page has more.

How does working with us start?

Every engagement starts with a 15-minute call. You talk with Nicolas Perez or Noah Alvarez, our co-founders. Book a 15-minute call to go over the territory and the systems you sell. Midnite Systems, formed in 2023, works remotely with businesses across the US from our office in Valencia, California.