On this page: What's broken
  1. What's broken
  2. What we install
  3. The case study
  4. Free answers
  5. Straight answers
  6. Book the diagnosis
SEO & AEO for solar

Solar SEO for New Jersey and Long Island —
a market that checks before it signs.

Solar's default playbook is door knocks and resold leads. We run the other playbook in another industry buyers don't trust: two people, zero startup capital, a $227 first month — grown into a $1.3M-a-year book with three-quarters of clients renewing on a lead engine we built ourselves, after years of buying vendor leads too. That engine is what we install for solar companies across New Jersey and Long Island. Not theory. Wiring.

Get your free diagnosis See what we fix
The receipts
Built and run our own lead engine $227 first commission → $1.3M/yr renewal book two people 4.9★ across 519 FreedInsure reviews
What's actually broken

Why good installers still lose the homeowner's search

Solar acquisition still runs on knocking and buying. Six leaks we see in solar pipelines — and where search wins them back.

Leak 01

Knock, buy, repeat

The industry default is a door knock and a spreadsheet of purchased leads — the same homeowner's info resold across a stack of installers. We bought vendor leads for our own floor for years; we know exactly what's in the box. The knife fight isn't the game. Owning the search is.

Leak 02

You inherit the last guy's pitch

High-pressure players burned enough homeowners that skepticism is now the default setting. So they verify: your name, your reviews, your town — searched before any appointment holds. Search is where the skeptical homeowner decides. If it shows nothing, or thin proof, the deal dies before you knew it existed.

Leak 03

The incentive rules keep moving

Federal credits, state programs, net-metering terms — the questions homeowners ask change constantly. The company whose content answers the current question wins the click. A stale incentives page reads as a stale company, and most installer sites haven't been touched since launch.

Leak 04

AI answers "is solar worth it in NJ"

Ask an AI assistant whether solar is worth it in New Jersey. It answers at length — and names nobody local. The next wave of solar research starts there, not on page one. Structured answer content decides which companies get named. Right now, almost no installer does the work.

Leak 05

Months of research, zero cadence

Solar isn't an impulse buy. Homeowners think for months, collect quotes, wait on a roof or a rate change. Most installers quote once and go quiet — so the deal closes with whoever happened to call back that week. A written long-cycle cadence is the cheapest revenue in solar.

Leak 06

No cost-per-installed-kW math

Most solar companies can quote cost per lead by channel and nobody can quote cost per installed kW. That's the number that decides where the money should go. The close-rate math hides in it too: the same spend closing 30% instead of 20% is 50% more revenue. If a channel can't be tracked to installed, it can't be trusted.

What we install

The engine, rebuilt for solar

We're not installers, and we won't pretend to be. We're operators who built a lead engine in another industry buyers verify before trusting — and ran it from a $227 first month to a $1.3M-a-year book with three-quarters of clients renewing. The full breakdown for solar companies is on the solar industry page — the wiring is below.

  • Town + utility-territory page architectureA page for every town you install in and every utility territory you serve, so "solar installers in [town]" and territory-specific questions land on you instead of a lead reseller.
  • Educational answer content that stays currentThe questions homeowners actually run — which incentives apply here, how payback gets calculated, how net metering works with this utility — answered plainly and kept current as the rules move. No invented savings numbers; frameworks the reader can run on their own bill.
  • The review and proof engineSkeptical buyers verify before they sign, and reviews are where they check. A built ask at the happy moment — install done, system on — every time, automatically. The same engine put 519 Google reviews at 4.9 stars on our own agency.
  • Speed-to-lead plus a long-cycle cadenceNew inquiries dialed in minutes. Researchers who aren't ready held on a written cadence that lasts as long as solar's decision does. Both wired, both tracked to signed installs.
FoundTown and territory pages, map pack, AI answers naming you
CheckedReviews and proof that survive a skeptic's search
QuotedDialed in minutes, then a cadence that lasts the whole research cycle
SignedEducated buyers close on answers, not pressure
CountedEvery channel tracked to cost per installed kW, so the math is real
Simulation — how the machine treats a lead
20:04:11Lead arrives — quote request submitted
+0:00:08Auto-text sent — consent on file
+0:01:42Dialed — lead connected
+0:02:59Next touch scheduled on the cadence

We're not guessing. We're the case study.

FreedInsure: founded February 2023 by two people with zero startup capital. First month of commission, $227. It grew to $1.3M a year with roughly three-quarters of the book renewing — fed by a lead engine the founders built themselves, after years of generating their own leads and buying vendor leads for their own floor. Clients left the verdict in public: 4.9 stars across 519 Google reviews.

Insurance has solar's exact disease: pushy reputations, resold leads, buyers who verify before they sign. Mike has sold for 30 years. Tino has sold since 17 and holds producer licenses in 42 jurisdictions. We learned this playbook with our own money on the line. See how it maps to your company on the solar industry page, or walk the entire build in the FreedInsure case study.

Free answers first

Read what we'd tell you anyway

The playbook isn't a secret. These are free, and they're most of what a first consult would cover.

Solar

Solar sales: closing buyers who don't trust solar salesmen

The pitch, the proof, and the follow-up that work when skepticism is the default setting.

Read the playbook → Leads

Buying leads vs. building your own: the honest math

We did both at scale. What shared leads really cost, and when the owned engine takes over.

Read the breakdown → Follow-up

Follow-up: where long-cycle deals actually close

Most quotes die of silence, not objections. The written cadence that keeps months-long deals alive.

Read the cadence →
Straight answers

Questions solar companies ask us

Solar SEO is the work of making your company the answer when a homeowner searches — or asks an AI — about going solar. In practice it includes a page architecture built around every town you install in and every utility territory you serve; Google Business Profile and map-pack optimization for 'solar installers near me' searches; a review and proof engine that asks every happy customer at the right moment; educational answer content on incentives, net metering, and payback that stays current as the rules change; and lead capture wired for minutes-to-dial follow-up plus a cadence long enough to match solar's research cycle. Rankings that don't end in installed systems don't count — the chain is tracked from search to signed, installed customer.
We don't quote a package before reading your pipeline. The free revenue diagnosis comes first: your current visibility, your competitors, your lead flow, and your close math. Then the engagement is scoped to what's actually broken and priced against the expected return — what a fixed pipeline is worth in signed installs. The honest metric isn't cost per lead; it's cost per closed customer, and that's the number the whole engagement is judged on. You see the price and the expected math in writing before a dollar moves. If the math doesn't clear, we say so — and you keep the scorecard.
We've done both at scale in our own business, so here's the honest answer. Bought solar leads are fast: you pay today, the phone rings today, and you can staff around the volume. But most shared solar leads are resold — the same homeowner's information goes to a stack of installers, you're in a price-and-pressure race from the first call, and the vendor owns the tap. Generating your own is the opposite: slow to start, then compounding — exclusive inquiries from homeowners who found you, read your answers, and checked your reviews before calling. The strongest solar companies run both: bought leads feed today's crews while the owned engine gets built to replace them. If you can only fund one, fund the asset you keep. The full math is in the buying-leads breakdown.
More solar research now starts with a question to an AI assistant — 'is solar worth it in New Jersey,' 'how does net metering work with my utility' — instead of a list of links. The assistant gives a thorough, generic answer, and in most markets it names no local installer, because almost no solar company publishes the structured, current answer content those systems draw from. Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of becoming the source: plain-language answers to the questions homeowners actually ask, marked up so machines can read them, kept current as incentive rules change. The companies that do the work get named in the answer. Everyone else gets summarized out of the deal.
Months, not weeks — and anyone quoting weeks is guessing. Town and territory pages have to be built and indexed, reviews accumulate one install at a time, and answer content earns its citations gradually. Layer solar's own consideration cycle on top — homeowners research for months before signing — and the pipeline effect lags the visibility effect. That is exactly why the follow-up cadence ships with the SEO: it catches the researchers who find you early in the build. The free diagnosis puts the expected sequence in writing, so you know what should move and when — and can hold us to it.

Get the free solar revenue diagnosis

Your visibility, your lead flow, your cost per closed customer — pulled apart for free by operators who built their own engine, not an account team. Straight verdict, in writing.

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The diagnosis is free. The installs going to the visible company aren't.
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