Is It Out of Scope? — SEO & marketing
Is expanding the tracked keyword list out of scope for an SEO retainer?
Usually yes past a meaningful threshold. Retainers typically specify a keyword count for tracking and reporting — a modest handful of additions is a reasonable accommodation, but a large expansion is a real increase in reporting and strategy work.
The retainer specifies a target keyword list — say, 25 or 50 terms tracked and reported on monthly. The client, expanding their product line or just curious about broader visibility, asks for dozens more terms to be added to tracking and strategy.
Is it out of scope?
Depends on scale. A small addition (a handful of related terms) is often a reasonable accommodation within the existing reporting cadence. A large expansion means more tracking-tool cost, more reporting surface, and often new content/optimization work to actually move those rankings — that's out of scope.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Out-of-scope clause→ — Defines the retainer's tracked keyword count — a meaningful expansion beyond that count is additional scope, priced separately.
Example contract wording
Example contract wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
The retainer's scoped around [X] tracked keywords. A few more related terms, I can usually fold into the existing reporting at no extra charge — but [Y] additional terms is a meaningful jump in both tracking cost and the optimization work to actually move them, so I'd want to scope that as an add-on.
How MarginFlow flags it
MarginFlow compares the requested keyword count against the contract's extracted target list size, flagging small additions as low-confidence/likely-in-scope for manual review and larger expansions as outside_scope with a suggested charge, rather than treating every additional keyword identically.