If somebody in your county opens Google and types solar panel installers near me, the three businesses in the map pack take most of the calls. Everything below is fighting over what is left.
What decides who sits in those three slots is not your website. It is your Google Business Profile, and most installer profiles are half filled in, set up wrong at the start, and never touched again.
Here is the whole setup, in the order worth doing it.
The short version
- Get your NAP identical everywhere. The same name, address and phone across every platform you appear on.
- Show your address. If you have an office or a yard, it belongs on the profile. Hiding it throws away one of the strongest local signals you can give Google.
- Primary category: Solar Energy Company. For secondaries, copy what the three profiles already in the map pack use, where they genuinely apply to you.
- Send the website link to your location page, not your homepage, and put something behind the appointment link rather than leaving it empty.
- Photos and reviews are the two things that keep moving you, and both need a habit rather than one good afternoon.
Get your NAP right before anything else
NAP is name, address and phone number. It sounds like the least interesting thing on this list and it is the thing that quietly holds everything else back.
Google is trying to work out whether the GreenWatt Solar on the profile, the one in the website footer and the one on four directory sites are all the same business. It does that by matching the details. If they do not match, the signal gets weaker, and a weaker signal means a lower position in the map pack.
Pick one version of each and use it everywhere.
| Where | Name | Address | Phone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | GreenWatt Solar | Unit 12, Ravenswood Business Park, Cork, T99 XY45 | 021 123 4567 |
| Your website footer | GreenWatt Solar | Unit 12, Ravenswood Business Park, Cork, T99 XY45 | 021 123 4567 |
| Your contact page | GreenWatt Solar | Unit 12, Ravenswood Business Park, Cork, T99 XY45 | 021 123 4567 |
| Facebook and Instagram | GreenWatt Solar | Unit 12, Ravenswood Business Park, Cork, T99 XY45 | 021 123 4567 |
| Every directory listing | GreenWatt Solar | Unit 12, Ravenswood Business Park, Cork, T99 XY45 | 021 123 4567 |
A mobile number on the Google profile and a landline in the website footer. Pick one number, put it everywhere, and forward the other to it if you need to.
Use your real address
You almost certainly have an office, a unit or a yard. That address is a real, verifiable signal that you exist where you say you exist, and it is one of the things Google leans on most in local search. It is not the only one, reviews do an enormous amount of work too, but it is a signal you either give Google or throw away for nothing.
- If you have an office, unit or yard: show the address and add service areas as well.
- If you work from home with no premises customers visit: hide it, because publishing it breaches Google’s guidelines.
- You should never invent an address, rent a virtual office or use an accountant’s. It gets caught and the profile goes down.
Google weighs how close you are to the person searching. An address in the town you want to rank in beats a service area covering it from forty minutes away. That is not something you can optimise your way around, but it is worth knowing when you pick where to base yourself.
Set the primary category correctly
If you change one thing today, change this. The primary category is a very strong ranking factor on the profile, and it is the one installers most often get wrong, usually by picking something broad like Electrician because it felt safer.
For an Irish solar installer the primary category is Solar Energy Company. Not Electrician, not Roofing Contractor, not Renewable Energy Supplier.
For the secondaries, copy what is already winning
Do not guess at these. Open the three profiles sitting in the map pack for your main town or city, look at what they have set, and match the ones that genuinely apply to you.
If the installers ranking above you all carry a category you do not have, that is worth adding. If one of them carries a category you do not actually do, leave it. A category you cannot serve pulls you into calls you do not want.
The primary category shows under the business name on their profile. For the secondaries, a free browser extension such as GMB Everywhere will list them all. It takes about two minutes per competitor and it is the closest thing to seeing their homework.
Add the towns you actually cover
Even with an address on the profile, you should still set service areas. Google calls this a hybrid business: the address says where you are, the service areas say where you will travel.
It is easy to miss because it does not replace the address, it sits underneath it. You will find it under Edit profile > Location > Service area.
The instinct is to type in Munster and be done with it. It is the wrong instinct. A huge service area is a weaker signal for every place inside it, so covering everywhere means ranking properly nowhere.
- You get up to twenty. Most installers should use eight to fifteen.
- Name the main towns, not the county and not the province.
- Stop at the point where you would rather not take the job.
Write the description properly
You get 750 characters. Most installer profiles either leave it blank or paste in a paragraph of company-speak about being passionate and customer focused.
Write it like you would answer someone at a counter. What you fit, where you fit it, how long you have been at it, and what happens next.
- Say what you do in the first lineThe opening line is what gets shown before the “more” link, so it does the work.
- Name the county and the main townsNaturally, in a sentence. Not a comma-separated list of thirty place names.
- Include the things people are choosing onYears in business, number of installs, SEAI registration, the warranty you offer.
- Finish with what to do nextRing the number, or book a survey. One clear action.
A description built out of “solar panels Cork, solar panels Midleton, solar panels Cobh” reads badly to a customer and does nothing for you. Google stopped rewarding that a long time ago.
Point the website link at the right page
The website link should go to the location page that matches the address on the profile. If the profile says Cork, the link goes to your Cork page. That page then carries the address, the phone number, the towns you cover from there and the work you have done nearby, and it says the same thing the profile says.
A homepage can do this job too, and for a smaller operation working out of one town it often is the right page, because the whole site is effectively about that one area. It is once you cover more than one that the homepage starts trying to speak to everybody at once, and a location page does it better.
| Link on the profile | Send it to | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Website | Your Cork location page | The page that matches the address on the profile. If you only cover one area, the homepage is fine. |
| Appointment | Your booking form | A booked slot is best. A contact form works well too, and either beats leaving it empty. |
| Each service | The matching service page | Battery storage goes to the battery storage page, not the homepage. |
| Every one of them | Tagged with UTMs | So you can tell in analytics what the profile actually sent you. |
Use the appointment link
The profile has an appointment link and hardly any installer uses it. It sits right beside the call button, and it catches the people who found you at half nine at night and were never going to ring you.
The best thing to put behind it is a form that books something: a survey, a site visit, a callback at a time they pick. A contact form works well too. Either of them beats leaving the link empty, because the point is that somebody who is not ready to talk yet still has somewhere to go.
- One page, one form, no navigation to wander off into.
- Ask for the least you need: name, phone, email address and the service they are interested in.
- Confirm it on screen and by email, so they know it landed.
- Tag the link so you can see in analytics how many came from the profile.
Logo and cover photo
Two images, and they are the first thing anyone sees.
The logo should be your actual logo, square, on a plain background, readable at the size of a thumbnail. Not a photo of the van with the logo on the side. Not a group photo. Not the last job you did.
The cover photo is the wide one at the top. That is where a real photo belongs: a finished array on a house that looks like the houses in your area, taken in decent light.
You do not fully control which image appears in the map pack, but Google leans on the logo and cover you set. Setting them badly guarantees a bad result. Setting them well gives you a good chance of one.
Fill in services and products
List them out properly: panel installation, battery storage, EV charger installation. Each one gets a short description in plain English.
Mirror the service pages on your website so the two say the same thing, and link each service to its matching page. A profile that lists six services and a website that describes four is a profile and a website disagreeing with each other.
Add real photos, and keep adding them
This is where you can beat every installer in your county for the price of ten minutes on site. Real photos of real jobs, taken on a phone, added every few weeks.
- The array on the roof, from the ground, on a house that looks local
- The inverter and the isolator on the wall, tidy
- The team, and the van, outside a job
- A before and an after on the same roof
- No stock photography. Everyone can tell, and it makes the rest of the profile look bought
- Geotag nothing and fake nothing. It does not help and it can hurt
Reviews are a goldmine
Reviews do two jobs at once. They move you up in the map pack, and they are social proof that helps a homeowner decide. An installer with sixty reviews and one with four are not competing on equal terms, no matter whose panels are better.
You do not need a clever system for this. The best moment to ask is at handover, while the customer is standing in front of finished work and is happier with you than they will ever be again.
And it is not only new jobs. If you have been at this a few years, there are dozens of happy customers behind you who would leave a review if somebody asked them. A short, polite message to past clients is one of the quickest ways to get a profile moving.
- Ask at handover, in personFace to face while the job is fresh, rather than by email three weeks later.
- Send the link on the spotHave your review link saved on your phone and text it there and then.
- Go back through past customersAnyone you did a good job for is worth asking, even if it was two years ago. Most people are happy to, they have just never been asked. Drop your Google review link straight into the text or email so there is nothing for them to go looking for.
- Reply to every single oneName the job and the town in the reply. It reads far better to the next person than a copy and pasted thank you.
- Answer the bad ones calmlyA measured reply to one poor review does more good than the review does harm.
Panels went in over two days, no mess and the grant paperwork was handled for us. Bill is down about sixty per cent since April.
Response from the ownerThanks Michael, glad it is doing what we said it would.Got three quotes and went with these. Turned up when they said they would, which is more than the other two managed.
Every review answered, and the reply sounds like a person. It reads better to the next one deciding.
No discounts, no entry into a draw, no free maintenance. It breaches Google’s policy and it can take the whole profile down, reviews and all.
Posts, questions and the monthly upkeep
Once the setup above is done, the profile is close to a set-and-forget job. This is the whole maintenance list.
- Post once or twice a month: a job you finished, a grant change, a new town
- Add three or four photos from that month’s jobs
- Reply to every new review
- Answer the questions people post, and seed the obvious ones yourself
If you would rather not run any of this yourself, it is part of what we do under our Local SEO service.
Questions installers ask
Should I hide my address?
Only if you genuinely have no premises. If you work off the kitchen table with a van in the drive, hide it, because publishing an address you do not meet customers at breaches Google’s guidelines. But most installers have an office or a yard, and that is one of the strongest local signals you can give Google. Show it.
How many categories should I use?
One primary, and secondaries only where they genuinely apply. The primary is what Google leans on hardest, so that one is Solar Energy Company. For the rest, look at the three profiles already in the map pack for your town and match what they carry. Do not add a category for work you do not actually do, because it pulls you into calls you cannot serve.
How many service areas should I add?
You can add up to twenty. Add the towns you would genuinely send a van to on a normal week, and stop there. Twenty towns you actually cover beats twenty counties you do not.
Can I offer a discount in exchange for a review?
No, and it is not worth the risk. Incentivised reviews breach Google’s policy and can take the whole profile down. Asking at handover, while the customer is happy and standing in front of the work, gets you more reviews than any voucher would.
What if I have more than one office?
Each premises gets its own profile and its own location page. Two offices sharing one profile is a wasted listing, and two profiles pointing at the same homepage is a wasted page. One address, one profile, one location page.
How long before the profile starts ranking?
It depends. How competitive your town is, how much was missing to begin with and how many reviews you are starting from all change the answer. What we can say is that a profile tends to move a lot quicker once it is properly optimised than most other work you could do, because the changes are quick to make and there is nothing to wait for once they are live.
Dylan Thébault is the founder of SolarScale Digital, Ireland's specialist marketing agency for solar installers. Working in digital marketing since 2020, agency-side in Cork and in-house in Canada, he now helps Irish installers turn searches, ads and AI answers into booked installs.
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