The July recommendations, one by one
| Check | July 2026 | November 2026 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can crawlers read the site? | Cloudflare managed challenge returned HTTP 403 to every direct request. Titles, markup and speed could not be checked. | All 89 discovered URLs returned HTTP 200. robots.txt and the sitemap are readable, and no page needs JavaScript to show its main content. | Fixed |
| AI search crawlers | Blocked by the same challenge. | 12 of 12 AI crawlers checked (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and others) are allowed in robots.txt. | Fixed |
| Homepage title | Solar Panels & Battery Storage for Hawaii Homes | IEH, which used the "IEH" abbreviation and left out Oahu and installation. | Solar Company Hawaii | Oahu & Maui Solar Installation | Done |
| City / island landing pages | None. No Honolulu, Kailua or island pages. | /solar-panels-for-home/oahu/, /maui/ and /big-island/ (Kona) are live, indexable and marked up with LocalBusiness and Service. | Done |
| Maui page indexable | Our July spot check found the Maui page set to noindex. | Indexable, self-canonical and in the sitemap. | Fixed |
| Powerwall page canonical | The Powerwall URL pointed its canonical at /solar-batteries/. | Merged into one page. /solar-batteries/ is now titled "Tesla Powerwall Hawaii: Oahu's Premier Certified Installer" and is self-canonical. | Resolved |
| LocalBusiness markup | Not confirmed on IEH. All three competitors had it. | On 45 pages, with postal address and opening hours. FAQPage markup is on 71 pages and BreadcrumbList on 79. | Done |
| Organization and WebSite markup on the homepage | Not checkable. | Still missing on the homepage and /about/. The Organization node elsewhere has no logo or contactPoint. RevoluSun's homepage has the full set. | Open |
| "Solar installation Hawaii" page | No page targeted it. | Now covered by the homepage title and by /solar-panels-for-home/, retitled "Solar Panels Hawaii: Oahu's Top-Rated Solar Installer". There is still no page dedicated to the exact phrase. | Mostly done |
| Hawaii solar cost guide | No page answered "how much does solar cost in Hawaii". | /solar-cost-hawaii/ ("Hawaii Solar Cost 2026: Pricing by System Size", with Offer and PriceSpecification markup) and a 2026 cost blog post. IEH also publishes its prices on its panel-brand pages. | Done |
| Service-area wording in titles | /estimate/ was "Get a Solar Estimate in Oahu". /solar-panel-cleaning/ was "Solar Panel Cleaning on Oahu". | "Free Online Solar Estimate | Oahu, Maui & Kona" and "Solar Panel Cleaning Oahu & Maui". | Done |
| Core Web Vitals | Not available (PageSpeed quota, Cloudflare). | Still no field data, because no PageSpeed key was configured for this run. Server response measured from our side: median 24 ms, p90 44 ms. | Not measured |
| Rankings | DataForSEO, July: 455 keywords ranked in the US, 90 of them in the top 10. | Same source, October: 308 ranked, 72 in the top 10. Most of the loss is generic US searches. Five of the six tracked Hawaii searches with history moved up. See "Like for like" below. | Mixed |
| Backlinks | Not assessed in July. DataForSEO history: 117 referring domains on 31 July. | 150 referring domains and 281 backlinks now (same source). | Up |
Where IEH ranks today
We ran live Google searches from Hawaii on 4 November 2026 (desktop, top 50) for the 16 keywords tracked in July. IEH is now in the top 3 for 7 of them and in the map pack for 8. In many cases, though, Google shows a different page from the one built for that search (highlighted).
| Keyword | IEH | Page Google shows | Page built for it | Alternate Energy | RevoluSun | Malama | IEH in map | AI Overview |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| solar tax credit hawaii | 1 | /solar-tax-credit-2026-vs-2027/ | /solar-panel-tax-credit/ | 5 | – | – | – | Yes |
| best solar company hawaii | 1 | / | / | 8 | 4 | 5 | 1 | Yes |
| solar companies in hawaii | 2 | /solar-panels-for-home/ | / | – | – | – | 1 | Yes |
| solar panels oahu | 2 | blog: Going Solar on Oahu, Maui & Big Island | /solar-panels-for-home/oahu/ | 10 | – | – | 1 | – |
| hawaii solar panels cost | 2 | blog: Why IEH Publishes Its Prices | /solar-cost-hawaii/ | 1 | – | – | – | – |
| solar energy hawaii | 3 | /blog/ | /solar-panels-for-home/ | 5 | – | – | 3 | – |
| how much does solar cost in hawaii | 3 | /blog/ | /solar-cost-hawaii/ | 1 | – | 30 | – | Yes |
| solar panels hawaii | 6 | /blog/ | /solar-panels-for-home/ | 7 | 37 | – | 2 | – |
| solar installation hawaii | 6 | /service/ (repair page) | /solar-panels-for-home/ | 1 | – | – | 2 | – |
| is solar worth it in hawaii | 8 | /blog/ | /is-solar-worth-it-hawaii/ | 5 | 17 | 34 | – | Yes |
| solar battery storage hawaii | 11 | / | /solar-batteries/ | 6 | 3 | 42 | – | Yes |
| hawaii solar company | 20 | /quote/ | / | – | – | – | 1 | – |
| oahu solar | 26 | /solar-videos/ | /solar-panels-for-home/oahu/ | 4 | – | – | 1 | – |
| tesla powerwall hawaii | 29 | /solar-panels-for-home/tesla/ | /solar-batteries/ | 2 | 41 | – | – | Yes |
| solar panel cleaning oahu | – | – | /solar-panel-cleaning/ | – | – | – | – | – |
| ev charger installation hawaii | – | – | /home-ev-charging-station/ | – | – | – | – | Yes |
Live Google results from DataForSEO: location Hawaii, desktop, top 50, collected 4 Nov 2026. Each position is one live result from one location, not a Search Console average. July positions come from the July audit. A highlighted page means Google shows a different page from the one built for that search.
Seen for the first time in November
These pages were not in the July sample, so we cannot say when they were added. They are live now and they widen what IEH can win in search:
/service/"Solar Repair Oahu & Maui" and/orphaned-solar-system-service/, for owners whose installer has gone, plus a blog post on what to do if your installer is out of business/solar-serve/maintenance memberships with online booking, and/solar-insure/warranty cover- Panel-brand pages (Hyundai, JA Solar, Panasonic, Qcells, REC, Tesla) with IEH's published price benchmarks
- Big Island (Kona) coverage, in addition to Oahu and Maui
- A cluster of guides on the 2026 and 2027 tax credits, the end of net metering, lease vs PPA vs buy, hurricane prep and outages
What is still open
| Finding | Evidence | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong page ranking | The blog index ranks for four buying and cost searches. The repair page ranks for "solar installation hawaii" and the videos page for "oahu solar". The page built for "tesla powerwall hawaii" (/solar-batteries/) is not in the top 50. | P1 |
| Stale FAQ markup | On /hawaii-solar-tax-credit-2027/, 5 of 8 questions in the FAQ markup are not shown on the page and contradict its current advice. The other 12 pages flagged by the automated check were verified as fine. | P1 |
| Homepage identity markup | The homepage and /about/ have no Organization or WebSite node. Organization has no logo or contactPoint. | P1 |
| Incomplete markup | 42 nodes are missing a required property: WebPage.name (34) and Offer.price/priceCurrency (8). | P2 |
| Claims without proof | 44 pages of 400+ words have no statistic, named source or first-hand result in their opening content. There are no project case studies. | P2 |
| Repair leads | /service/ has an estimate CTA, a phone number and SolarServe booking, but no repair request form. | P2 |
| Housekeeping | /tesla-solar-roof/ has no internal links. /thank-you-scheduler/ is noindexed but listed in the sitemap. There is no HSTS header. 37 homepage tap targets are under 24 px on a phone. | P2–P3 |
Like for like: July against November
The July and November audits used different scoring frameworks, so 52 and 87.2 can't be compared. To compare them fairly, we rescored both months on one set of rules and one data source.
- One rubric. July's 12 dimensions and weights, frozen, with written sub-checks. Each month is scored only from evidence collected in that month. Anything not measured gets a neutral 50%.
- Two independent scorers. Two different AI models scored the same evidence packs separately. We publish both scores, not an average we picked.
- One ranking source. DataForSEO for both months, US database. The live Hawaii results above have no July equivalent, so they are not used for the comparison.
Scored again from the July evidence. The published July score was 52. That run gave neutral credit to checks the Cloudflare block hid, and the rescore counts the block itself as a measured failure.
The same rubric applied to the November crawl. The new framework gives 87.2 because it also counts things July never measured.
| Dimension (July rubric) | Weight | July · scorer A / B | November · scorer A / B | Change (mean) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indexation and Crawlability | 10 | 43 / 35 | 96 / 100 | +59 |
| Metadata Quality | 8 | 60 / 67 | 92 / 100 | +32.5 |
| Technical SEO Health | 12 | 42.5 / 37.5 | 85 / 84 | +44.5 |
| Content Business Value | 10 | 39 / 40 | 87 / 100 | +54 |
| Keyword Coverage | 10 | 45 / 45 | 78 / 77 | +32.5 |
| Content Depth and Freshness | 8 | 60 / 70 | 76 / 76 | +11 |
| Local SEO | 10 | 40 / 35 | 73 / 90 | +44 |
| Competitive Position | 8 | 33 / 25 | 32 / 31 | +2.5 |
| Conversion Readiness | 8 | 61.5 / 65 | 76 / 70 | +9.8 |
| Schema and AEO Readiness | 8 | 37.5 / 37.5 | 74 / 77 | +38 |
| Performance and Core Web Vitals | 5 | 50 / 50 | 57 / 65 | +11 |
| Measurement and Tracking | 3 | 50 / 50 | 90 / 90 | +40 |
| Overall | 100 | 46 / 45 | 77 / 81 | +34 |
The site, the markup and the local pages improved a lot: indexation, metadata, content and schema all rose by 30 to 60 points. Competitive position did not move. IEH has fewer top-10 keywords than in July, while Alternate Energy has more.
Rankings from one source, both months
DataForSEO's monthly estimates for the US Google database, July 2026 against October 2026 (the latest full month).
| Domain | Keywords ranked | In the top 10 | Estimated monthly visits |
|---|---|---|---|
| IEH | 455 → 308 | 90 → 72 | 759 → 352 |
| Alternate Energy | 652 → 729 | 151 → 220 | 388 → 537 |
| RevoluSun | 386 → 291 | 102 → 77 | 533 → 592 |
| Malama Solar | 254 → 109 | 84 → 49 | 349 → 256 |
IEH's estimated visits fell from 759 to 340 between July and August and have been flat since. RevoluSun and Malama also lost ranked keywords over the same months. Alternate Energy is the only one of the four that grew.
Most of what IEH lost isn't Hawaii demand. Of the 193 keywords that dropped out since July, 151 don't mention Hawaii or an island, and they carry 97% of the lost search volume. Only 9 of the lost keywords were Hawaii searches in the top 10. IEH still ranks for 109 Hawaii searches, 25 of them in the top 10.
For the tracked keywords, DataForSEO keeps dated snapshots of the Google results. 5 of the 6 with two readable snapshots moved up:
| Keyword | IEH, first snapshot | IEH, latest snapshot | Alternate Energy |
|---|---|---|---|
| solar panels hawaii | 20 (03/07) | 21 (08/09) | 7 → 8 |
| solar energy hawaii | 77 (03/07) | 9 (08/09) | 4 → 6 |
| solar panels oahu | 7 (18/07) | 6 (19/09) | 4 → 7 |
| oahu solar | 7 (27/07) | 4 (02/10) | 3 → 1 |
| solar panel cleaning oahu | 12 (17/06) | 10 (02/09) | – → – |
| solar installation hawaii | 16 (17/06) | 11 (02/09) | 4 → 1 |
Referring domains, same source: 117 on 31 July, 150 now.
These are DataForSEO estimates, not Search Console. The snapshots come from the US database on different dates, so they won't match the live Hawaii positions above. Search Console clicks and impressions from July to now would settle the traffic question.