Is It Out of Scope? — SEO & marketing
Is building a custom plugin or module out of scope for an SEO retainer?
Yes. Writing and shipping code is engineering work, not part of an SEO retainer even when the plugin's purpose is SEO-related.
SEO recommendations sometimes require custom functionality to implement — a redirect manager, a schema generator — and the client assumes the team making the recommendation can also build it.
Is it out of scope?
Yes. Recommending what a tool should do and writing the code that builds it are different disciplines, even when the tool exists purely to serve SEO goals.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Exclusions clause→ — Custom development work is excluded from an SEO retainer even when the resulting tool serves an SEO purpose.
Example contract wording
Example contract wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
We can spec exactly what the [plugin/module] needs to do to support the SEO recommendation, but building it is development work outside this retainer. That'd need to go to your dev team or a separate build project.
How MarginFlow flags it
MarginFlow flags custom-build requests outside_scope on SEO contracts regardless of the tool's stated purpose, since writing code is a different discipline from strategy and analysis.