Is It Out of Scope? — SEO & marketing
Is designing extra logo concepts out of scope for a SEO / marketing project?
Yes. Logo and brand identity design is a different discipline from organic search work and isn't covered by an SEO retainer.
This tends to come up when a client is mid-rebrand and is looping in every agency contact for opinions, including the SEO team, whose actual work has nothing to do with logo design. It's a reasonable instinct to want more eyes on a brand decision, but it's not a service the SEO retainer covers.
Is it out of scope?
Yes. Logo design and brand identity work sit entirely outside organic search strategy, and the retainer doesn't extend to design feedback or concept generation regardless of the request's framing.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Exclusions clause→ — The retainer is scoped to organic search work — logo and brand design fall outside it as a different discipline entirely.
Example contract wording
Example contract wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
Logo design is outside what our retainer covers — it's really a branding/design question rather than an SEO one. Happy to weigh in informally if it's useful, but I'd treat that as a courtesy rather than scoped work, and I'd recommend getting your designer's take as the primary input.
How MarginFlow flags it
MarginFlow flags logo and brand-design requests outside_scope on SEO contracts by default, given the clear discipline mismatch — the explanation notes that any input given would be informal rather than something billed against the retainer, which helps the account manager set that expectation with the client too.