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We captured 22 solar pages that were paying for Google Ads clicks and read all of them. These 6 are the ones that earn the click back. Everything we found is on this page, free.
Solar is a $25,000 decision and the entire conversion is... typing a zip code. Five digits. Everything on the page is either building enough trust to type those digits or giving someone a reason to close the tab. Local installers and national marketplaces approach this totally differently.
From real solar installation Google Ads campaigns in the US
The landing pages actually worth stealing from
So you know exactly what to avoid
EDGE Energy repairs solar systems across Maryland, Washington DC and Virginia, and it earned the top slot by selling to the customers its competitors walked away from. The opening paragraph speaks straight to the homeowner whose installer went bust and left the panels behind, which happens in this trade more than anyone in it admits. Above the navigation sits a full-width band naming an award a stranger could go and verify.
If you offer solar service/repair, lead with the emotional hook of abandoned customers ('one of the thousands left stranded by a company that vanished') before listing services. This reframes your company as the rescue, not just another vendor.
Solar installers go under constantly, and the homeowner left holding the panels is angry at somebody who is not you. EDGE opens by naming that person and taking their side, which turns the ugliest thing about this trade into a reason to ring them. If you service systems you did not fit, say so in your first sentence, not in a paragraph about capabilities.
Nobody types the name of the service they need. They type what they can see: a red light, a flat day in the app, a bill that went the wrong way. Every service card here ends with a Common Symptoms line in exactly those words, so the visitor can recognise their own problem. It is the last bullet in the card, under the description and the details. Write the symptoms for each thing you fix, then put them first.
This is the thing on the page a nervous homeowner can go and check for themselves. EDGE runs the short form of it, Six-Time ENERGY STAR Contractor of the Year, as an underlined full-width band above its own logo and navigation, so it arrives before the headline does. The fuller line quoted here comes back midway down, beside the ENERGY STAR logo. An award, a licence number or a registration beats any adjective you could write about yourself. Whatever yours is, it does not belong in the footer.
The only button inside the hero is white outline text on a hairline box, laid over a busy photo of a crew working on a roof. The headline above it is the same white and much bigger, so the thing you want pressed is the quietest white on the picture. You are paying solar repair prices for that click. Fill your main button in, give it a colour nothing else on the page uses, and make it the brightest object on the screen.
Somebody arrives on a repair click and meets a grid of nine services: cleaning, repair, removal, remote support, snow guards, pest abatement, subscriptions, maintenance and upgrades. Every card is the same shape and the same length, so nothing tells the visitor which card is theirs. Sort the grid by what people actually search for, or give the ad its own page and leave the catalogue on the site.
Somebody clicked an ad about repairing panels they already own, and the bright blue strip above the header offers to work out how much solar could save them, with a button beside it promising a quote in minutes. That bar belongs on the installation page. Go through every banner, strip and pop-up on the page your repair ads point at, because they are inherited from the site and nobody has read them since.
Chicago installer RxSun puts two buttons side by side in its hero, and that is what got it into the file. Book Consultation is for the buyer who wants a person. Request Quote is for the buyer who wants arithmetic. Above both buttons the page prints exactly what the session covers, item by item, so nobody has to guess what they are agreeing to. The meal donation under the logo is the only line here another installer could not copy.
Offer two distinct CTAs above the fold: 'Book Consultation' for visitors who want face-to-face guidance and 'Request Quote' for visitors who just want numbers. Solar shoppers split cleanly between people who want a human to walk them through it and people who just want the math - forcing both down one path loses one of them.
Solar shoppers split cleanly down the middle. Half want a person to walk them through it and half want the arithmetic on a screen, and a page with a single button loses whichever half it was not built for. RxSun offers Book Consultation and Request Quote side by side. Give your visitor both doors, then watch which one they use and price your bids accordingly.
The reason people will not book a solar consultation is that they picture a salesman in the living room for half an evening. This page prints the agenda directly above the buttons, so the visitor knows what the session covers before they give up the time. Write yours out, say how long it takes, and say plainly what you will not do on the call.
Nothing else in this file gives a buyer something they could repeat to a friend over dinner. The sentence quoted here sits near the bottom of the page, but RxSun does not wait that long to say it: the promise is baked into the logo image itself, in small orange type under the wordmark, so it arrives above the headline and costs the hero no room at all. Find the thing your company genuinely does that no competitor can claim, and put it where the eye lands first.
That percentage sits well above the federal credit on its own, so it must be stacking state schemes, and the page never shows the parts. The deadline is no better: the same sentence ends potentially available for only a few more months, and it names no date at all. If your offer depends on an incentive, break it down, print the date it ends, and put a reminder in the calendar for the day it stops being true.
The address of this page promises a free custom quote. The only figure anywhere on it is a percentage off, and there is no price band, no monthly saving and no payback period. The visitor has to book the call to learn any of that, which is precisely what they were trying to avoid by searching. Put a range on the page, label it as a range, and let the call be about their roof.
Below the hero every picture is a flat cartoon icon: a little house with a sun behind it, a pair of hands passing a dollar. The only photograph is the rooftop behind the headline, and it is tinted so far down into the dark that you cannot make out the panels on it. You are asking a homeowner to spend the price of a car and let a crew climb above their bedroom. Photograph your own installs on a clear morning, name the town under each, and delete the icons.
Aurora runs a quote comparison service rather than an installation business, and this page earns its place because the first screen asks for a postcode and nothing else. Small chips sit directly under the box answering what it costs, whether the data is safe and whether the prices are any good, which are the doubts that stop a stranger typing. The page also answers the questions people put into Google, rather than making somebody book a call to hear them.
Pair your quote tool with a specific average savings number ('Homeowners are saving $55/month') and an FAQ section that answers the top solar objections directly on the landing page, so researchers get their questions answered without leaving.
Every other company in this file promises to get back to you. Aurora promises the answer now, and it puts that promise in the biggest type on the screen where a comparison shopper reads it first. If your quote really is fast, time it and print the number. If it is not fast, that is the thing to fix before the copy.
The second before somebody types is the second they wonder what it will cost, who gets their details and whether the prices are any good. Aurora answers all three in a row of tiny chips directly beneath the input, at the exact point the doubt happens. Yours are probably in a paragraph further down, which is too late to be any use.
Battery or no battery, how long panels last, what the tax credit does, what it does to the resale value. Those are the things your visitor has open in another tab right now. Aurora answers them here rather than making somebody book a call to find out, and every answer given on the page is a reason not to go back to the search results.
Divide what a system costs by that monthly figure and the payback lands somewhere past most people's mortgages. A saving that small makes the case against solar rather than for it. If your headline number cannot survive a visitor doing the division, either use a different number or show the whole sum, credit and finance included.
The number sits in the top right corner in a small white pill, in type smaller than the sentence under the headline, on a page selling something the size of a car. Somebody who wants to speak to a human should never have to hunt for how. Set your number at headline weight, or accept that the only people converting are the ones happy to type.
A couple sit in wooden garden chairs with a laptop, under a tree, in front of a low dark house. There is a dark patch on that roof which may well be an array, and at this distance, in this shade, nobody can tell. This is a trade where the proof is visual, and the biggest object on the screen is doing none of the work. Put a roof your own crew finished in that slot, shot from the street.
Sunrun is the largest residential installer in the country and this page wins on the shape of its form rather than on anything it says. You get asked for a postcode, then whether you own the house, then the size of your electric bill, a question a screen, and every screen prints how far through you are. A dark cookie card lands over the zip box on arrival, which is a shame, because that box is the whole page.
Replace your static lead form with a progressive qualification quiz (zip code > homeowner check > electric bill range > email > name > phone) so each step feels like the visitor is getting closer to a personalized answer rather than filling out a generic form.
Anybody comparing solar companies is quietly working out who will still exist in a decade to honour the warranty, and Sunrun settles that in the headline before it asks for anything. You probably cannot claim the country. You can almost certainly claim your county, your install count or your years in the trade, so pick whichever is true and lead with it.
The page asks for one thing, a zip code, and the rest arrives a screen at a time: do you own the house, what is the bill, then email, name, phone. Every screen prints how far through you are. The same questions stacked in a long grey column read as paperwork. Asked in turn they read as an assessment being built for you, and people finish them.
Answer the electric bill question and the next screen opens with that line, and only then asks where to send the quote. The good news arrives before the ask, not after it, so the questions left feel like finishing something instead of starting something. Put your own honest piece of good news at the point in the flow where people usually stop, and say it in their words.
Load this page cold, the way a paid visitor does, and a dark cookie panel sits across the bottom left and covers the zip box the whole page exists to fill. Nobody inside Sunrun sees it, because their browsers agreed to cookies months ago. Open your own landing page in a private window before you next raise a bid.
The visitor answers every question in the quiz, including what they pay for electricity, and the reward at the end is that somebody will ring them. No estimate, no range, nothing at all about their own house. If you cannot give an instant figure, give a band built from the bill they just told you and let the call confirm it.
Say no to owning your home and the flow stops and offers a referral bonus instead. You still paid for that click, and Google will keep sending renters until you tell it not to. Fix the targeting first, then make the rejection screen earn something: community solar, a renter's guide, a note to the landlord.
EnergySage does not install anything. It runs a marketplace, and it earned its place as the only winner here that names a price position before the visitor scrolls. Its subhead promises no phone calls, which sounds like a strange thing to sell until you remember what usually happens after you ask for a solar quote.
Put a specific dollar savings number ('$2,000+ average annual savings') in a visible callout box directly adjacent to your quote input field, so the visitor sees the reward and the action in the same visual zone.
Before the visitor has read the headline they have been told what normal costs and that this will beat it. That answers the fear running underneath the whole solar market, which is being talked into overpaying by a stranger on the doorstep. If you can honestly beat a published benchmark, name the benchmark in the bar above your headline.
EnergySage never asks you to trust a company. It asks you to trust the screening, and it sets the count of screened installers in a white card over the hero photo. If you run a network, sell the screening. If you fit panels yourself, the same move is your accreditation list, printed where that count would go.
Mastheads a homeowner already reads do a job your own testimonials cannot, because you did not write them. Something like it exists in your history too: a local paper, a trade title, a utility scheme, a supplier's case study. Dig them out, get permission, and run them in a quiet row under the offer.
There are two ways to begin here and they do not look related: a solid dark button in the yellow and orange bar across the top, and a small postcode box in the hero with Next beside it. The bar sits above the logo, so its button is the first solid thing the eye meets, and it is not the field you want filled. Pick the start that matters, make it the biggest thing, and point the other at it.
Under that heading sit three bordered cards, headed Cash, Loan and Lease or PPA, each with its own bullet list of tax treatment and upfront cost. Nobody who has not yet seen a price can pick between them, so the visitor either guesses or stalls. Save the money question for after the quote, when there is a figure to attach it to.
The person shopping solar quotes is usually the one in the house with a spreadsheet, and that reader treats a sentence like this as a sign somebody is working them. The column directly beside it already gives the rate rise and the outage rise as figures, which does the same job without the theatre. Show the rate rise as a chart of what they have already paid and let them draw the line forward themselves.
The Ankeny team behind this page fits rooftop solar across Iowa and the Midwest. It is in the file because it puts a real lead form straight under the hero, close enough that the first boxes are already on screen when the ad lands. It also names a forgivable loan that only runs in certain Des Moines and Cedar Rapids neighbourhoods, which is the sort of detail a national brand can never match. What it never does anywhere is put a figure against the saving its own heading promises.
Place your lead capture form directly beside the hero headline (not below it) so the visitor sees the value proposition and the action step in a single viewport without scrolling.
The photo filling the right half of the hero is an ordinary Midwestern house with an attached garage, pumpkins on the porch and a black array running across the main roof beside the dormer window. A visitor near Ankeny sees a house shaped like theirs, which beats any render. Send somebody with a camera to the last job you finished in the town you are buying clicks in.
How do the tax credits actually work is the question that stalls the sale, and most pages answer it with a federal paragraph the visitor has already read somewhere else. This page names a local programme, says which neighbourhoods it covers and links to the eligibility check. Find the schemes running in your own state and name them the same way.
The boxes sit directly under the hero, close enough that the name and phone fields are already on screen when the ad lands, so nothing asks the visitor to scroll before they can start. The promise of a free, no obligation quote sits in the left column beside them, which is why nobody thinks they are buying anything yet. Most pages in this file take a postcode and promise a quote later. Ask for what you genuinely need to ring somebody back, and ask for it where the ad lands them.
Eight links run across the top of a page bought with a solar ad: Home, Services, Resources, Blog, Projects, About Us, Locations and Contact. Each is a way out of the page you paid for, and Blog and Projects are the tempting ones. When a page exists to serve a single ad, cut the header back to the logo, the phone number and the form.
Estimate Your Cost Savings is the promise printed beside the form, and the page never estimates anything: there is no dollar figure anywhere on it. The visitor has to hand over a phone number to find out whether solar works on their street, and the careful buyer who came to compare will not do it. Print a typical system cost for your area, with the credit taken off and left on, and the form starts filling itself.
That green tab sits in the top left corner, overlapping the start of the headline, and it makes the most interesting promise on the screen. Press it and you leave for a page called see your solar cost, instead of dropping to the boxes under the hero. If a button says the thing your visitor came for, point it at your form, not off the landing page.
Pages that break the playbook in interesting ways
Skip the savings calculators and financing breakdowns. Lead with real workers in the field (hard hats, safety vests, hands on panels) and emphasize execution reliability over financial returns. This works for the homeowner who already decided on solar and now fears their installer will go out of business before the warranty claim. CDL's 60-year history as a railroad and electrical contractor signals permanence in a way no solar-boom startup can match.
Hero image of a real CDL worker in hard hat and red company polo standing in front of a ground-mount solar array - this is not a stock photo, it is their actual employee at their actual job site, and it signals 'we are tradespeople who build things' rather than 'we are a sales organization that subcontracts the work'
'Since 1964' company history spanning railroad, trade, and manufacturing before expanding into solar tells a story of institutional permanence - a company that has survived 60 years across multiple industries is more likely to honor a 25-year warranty than a company founded in the solar boom
Testimonials from generator installation customers (Sharon K., 'Alternative Energy') are candid and specific ('They ran off, got the parts, came back and finished it that day') - these read as real because they include minor complaints that were resolved, which is more believable than curated 5-star reviews
Zero financial information on the entire page - no savings estimates, no financing options, no tax credit mention, no pricing ranges, nothing that answers the first question almost every solar shopper types into Google: 'how much will this save me?'
Both testimonials are from generator installations, not solar - the page uses 'Alternative Energy' testimonials as a proxy for solar credibility, but a solar buyer wants to hear from someone who actually bought solar from CDL
The 'Get a Quote' CTA links to a separate quote tool page rather than embedding a form - this adds a click and a page load that increases drop-off, especially on mobile
Every winner answered the same questions. Find the row that looks like the traffic you are already buying, then go and take that page apart.
| Page | Entry path | Named offer | Phone in the first screen | Rating in the first screen | Standout move |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1EDGE Energy | Call, Book Now, or Let's Connect | No | Yes | No | An award band above the navigation |
| #2RxSun | Book a call, or ask for a quote | No | Yes | No | The agenda for the call, written out |
| #3Aurora Solar | Postcode box | No | Tiny | No | Doubts answered under the input |
| #4Sunrun | Postcode, then a quiz | No | No | No | A question a screen, counting up |
| #5EnergySage | Postcode box | Yes | No | No | A price position in the top bar |
| #61 Source Solar | Form under the hero | No | Tiny | No | A local loan named on the page |
Read the keywords you are buying before you pick a row. Somebody typing solar panel repair already owns the panels and has a problem today, so they want a number to ring and a list of symptoms they recognise. Somebody typing solar panel cost is at the kitchen table with a calculator and will never pick up the phone, so they want a saving, a payback and a box to type into. You paid the same for both clicks, and most of the pages here serve neither: they take a postcode and promise a quote later.
Lines lifted word for word off the pages above. We name whose page each one came from, and a click copies it.
LET'S CONNECT
Enter your zip code to get a quote directly from Sunrun.
Request Quote
Lower Your Home’s Energy Bill With Solar
Questions? Speak to a real solar expert.
3 pages burning ad spend with fundamental issues
Every click to these pages costs real money. We found pages with nothing to back their claims, mismatched intent, weak CTAs, and messaging that ignores what the searcher actually typed. Here is what to avoid.
This is a SaaS pricing page for Aurora Solar's design software ($159-$259/month/user plans for solar professionals). The ad triggers on 'aurora solar com' but the page sells project design tools to solar installers, not solar panels to homeowners. A consumer searching for solar installation who lands here sees subscription tiers, API integrations, and 'unlimited users' - completely wrong audience. Every click is 100% wasted spend.
This is a B2B SaaS pricing page for solar design software, not a solar installation landing page - consumer visitors see monthly subscription prices and API documentation instead of panel specs and savings estimates
The ad targets a branded keyword ('aurora solar com') but routes to a pricing page that assumes the visitor already knows what Aurora does and is ready to compare plans - no education, no context for non-customers
Cookie consent banner on load obscures the pricing tiers, adding an extra click before the visitor can even assess whether they are on the right page
This is a retail electricity provider landing page for Texas deregulated energy market. The page promotes electricity rate plans, 30-day test drives, and bill management. There is zero mention of solar panels, installation, financing, or any solar-related content. The page appeared in solar keyword results because 'energy' keywords overlap, but a visitor searching for solar installation finds a utility company page about locking in electricity rates. Complete category mismatch.
Zero solar content on a page appearing in solar keyword results - the visitor searching for 'solar panels' or 'solar installation' finds electricity rate plans and account management features
The Texas-cowboy branding ('Lasso in one of the best electricity rates,' 'skedaddle on outta here') is charming for its target audience but completely irrelevant to solar panel shoppers
The ad targets 'utility companies houston tx' and 'electricity companies in baytown tx' which are legitimate electricity provider keywords - this page is in the solar capture pool by accident due to keyword overlap in the data collection, not because Energy Texas is bidding on solar terms
The ad triggers on high-volume residential keywords like 'solar plate for home' (135K searches) and 'california solar panels' (1,900 searches), but the landing page is specifically for commercial and agricultural solar installations. A homeowner searching for residential panels sees 'Solar Energy for Businesses & Farms,' warehouse rooftop photos, and customer stories about permaculture farms and Habitat for Humanity commercial buildings. The page has no residential content, no home photos, no residential pricing. At solar CPCs, sending 135K monthly searches worth of residential intent to a commercial page is a significant budget leak.
The ad targets 'solar plate for home' (135K monthly searches) but the landing page headline is 'Solar Energy for Businesses & Farms' - this is a fundamental audience mismatch where residential searchers land on a commercial page
Drone photography of commercial warehouse rooftops with large-scale panel arrays signals industrial scale, not the 10-20 panel residential system a homeowner is shopping for
The 'Commercial tax credits are still available to those who purchase prior to July 4, 2026' deadline reference is commercially-focused tax language that residential buyers will not understand or trust
The two strongest pages (EnergySage and Sunrun) both lead with a zip code input rather than a name/email form. This works because solar buyers want to know 'will this save ME money?' before committing to a sales call. A zip code is low-friction, feels like a tool rather than a form, and the visitor gets personalized savings estimates before being asked for contact details. Compare this to pages that lead with name/phone/email forms where the visitor gets nothing until a salesperson calls them back.
EnergySage shows '$2,000+ average annual savings' in a callout box next to the hero headline. This immediately reframes solar from 'should I go green?' to 'how much money am I leaving on the table?' Solar buyers are 60%+ Blue (analytical) persona and they want the number first, the story second. Pages that lead with sustainability messaging or vague 'reduce your energy bill' claims lose to competitors who put actual dollar amounts on screen.
EnergySage displays Bloomberg, Forbes, CBS, and other news outlet logos, names the visitor already knows and trusts. EDGE Energy leads with '6-time ENERGY STAR Contractor of the Year.' These third-party validations address the core solar fear: 'will this company still exist in 25 years?'
EDGE Energy targets the growing segment of homeowners whose original solar installer went out of business. 'Whether we installed your system or you're one of the thousands left stranded by a company that vanished' directly addresses the #1 solar fear and turns it into a customer acquisition channel. As the solar industry matures and more companies fail, this niche grows. It also builds trust for new installs: if they service other companies' orphaned customers, they clearly plan to be around.
Winners give the visitor a tool (zip code lookup, savings calculator, instant quote) that delivers personalized value before asking for contact information. Losers send paid traffic to pages that serve the wrong audience entirely: B2B software pricing pages shown to homeowners searching for solar panels, electricity provider landing pages shown to solar installation searchers, and commercial/farm solar pages triggered by residential solar keywords.
Solar clicks are among the dearest a small business buys, and the pages catching them mostly do the same thing: take a postcode and promise a quote later. The visitor is being asked to start a sales process before anybody has told them what solar costs on their street. The winners here get further by answering something first, whether that is a price position, a symptom list or an agenda for the call.
Put a rating on the page before anybody scrolls. Not a single winner in this file shows a star rating or a review count in the first screen. That is a hole the whole industry has left open. A homeowner letting a crew onto their roof cares more about the last customer's opinion than about anything you can write about yourself. EDGE Energy does run a Google review carousel and a score badge, and you reach them near the bottom of a very long page, which is a strange place to keep the thing that settles it.
Give the visitor a figure before you ask for their number. EnergySage puts a price position in the bar above its headline and an average saving in a white card over the hero photo, and it is the only page here that prints either before the visitor scrolls. Aurora and RxSun do print a figure, but you have to scroll to find it. Publish a band for a typical system in your area, with the credit taken off and left on, and label it clearly as a band. Then the call is about their roof instead of about whether they can afford solar at all.
Write the symptom your customer can already see. Every service card on the EDGE Energy page carries a Common Symptoms line: a red light on the inverter, a day of no production, buildup after pollen season. Nobody searches for the name of the fix. They search for what is going wrong. EDGE keeps that line last, under the description and the details. Write yours in the same plain words, then put them first, where a scanning eye lands.
Say what happens after they submit. Sunrun's reward for finishing a whole quiz is that somebody will ring soon, and that is all it says. EDGE Energy is the exception: it walks you through the call, the remote check on your system and the site visit if one is needed, and it says how long the visit runs. Write the same thing under your own button, and say who rings and how quickly. It is the cheapest change on this list.
Every line here came off a screenshot that somebody sat and counted. Put your own page beside it and tick what it already does.
Winner #3 here, quote.aurorasolar.com, shows two different phone numbers: (888) 778-6896 in the header, (888) 891-3531 down at the form. That reads like a lead broker. We caught it by reading the page, and postclick does the same to the page your solar ads point at. It tells you what's stopping a $25,000 buyer from typing five digits into your zip field, then designs new versions and builds the one you pick.