Blog/website Question..

No.

You want to eventually rank for "solar panels", but there's probably a lot of competition for it.

Instead use long-tail keyword phrases with the main phrase "solar panel" in them. So optimize each of your posts (or pages) for a different keyword phrase related to "solar panels"

e.g. build solar panels, solar panels that cost less than $200, DIY solar panels, wrong ways to install solar panels, etc.

It will be easier to rank for the longer-tail keywords. Eventually over time, as the search engines crawl your site, they'll see the word "solar panels" enough to rank you for the keyword "solar panels" itself.

Be sure you're checking Google's keyword tool to see how much traffic you're getting for that keyword phrase, and check SEOchat.com's keyword difficulty tool to see if you'll rank well for that keyword phrase. You want 50% or less.

Now...

You've got to decide between a blog or website. Know this. The search engines prefer fresh content. That means it will tend to rank blogs higher than a static 8-page website or squeeze page.

So if you're going to go the static website route, not only do you have to optimize your pages for the keywords, you have to find another way to get more relevant backlinks to your site to help it rank on the first page.

That's where press releases (recommended and fast), article marketing, twitter, submitting to directories, etc. come in. You need to capitalize on another platform that either you can make use of SEO to rank on the search engines or has a lot of backlinks to them already.

Keep in mind that all this backlink building can take months, even a year or so. So it could be a while before you see your pages on front page results for a keyword. You also don't know how good the backlinks of your competitors are either, so don't worry too much about it. Choose keywords targeting your audience you can rank for.

This is a natural process, and Google likes it that way. As soon as it smells "spam", you're site goes to the sandbox. So be patient.

Another thing I would recommend, after you optimize your pages, is to find a blog related to your niche that gets lots of traffic and ask the owner if you can submit a guest post. This is sometimes known as guest blogging.

In the bio of your article, add the link to your site. This is probably the easiest free route to getting you immediate traffic from a targeted audience because you don't have to worry so much about SEO, but your content better be really useful and interesting. Maybe a good guest post could be "How Installing Solar Panels Backwards Could Be A Fire Hazard And Get You In Trouble With The Fire Department".

You can find these blogs by going to Google, typing in your niche + "write for us".

For a really good SEO strategy, I highly recommend Tinu Abayomi-Paul's "Traffic Reality Course" on her blog freetraffictip.com. Another good website about free traffic is Kim Roach's Buzzblogger.com.