Is It Out of Scope? — SEO & marketing
Is redesigning the homepage out of scope for an SEO / marketing project?
The redesign itself is out of scope, but the SEO agency's involvement in reviewing it for ranking impact is a legitimate — and often necessary — related ask, worth distinguishing clearly from doing the redesign.
The retainer covers keyword strategy, on-page optimization, technical SEO, and reporting — not design or development. When the client decides to redesign the homepage (often through a separate design agency or in-house), they frequently expect the SEO team to be automatically involved: reviewing the new design for SEO impact, rewriting on-page copy for the new layout, checking the new information architecture doesn't tank rankings. Some of that genuinely belongs in the retainer; a lot of it is new project work layered on top.
Is it out of scope?
Partly. A quick SEO review of a redesign in progress — flagging obvious ranking risks — is arguably retainer-adjacent and worth a light-touch yes in many cases. Rewriting on-page content for an entirely new page structure, auditing URL/redirect changes at launch, and ongoing back-and-forth with the design team through a multi-week redesign process is a meaningfully larger commitment than the retainer scoped, and should be named as such.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Assumptions clause→ — States what the retainer assumes about the site staying stable — a homepage redesign is exactly the kind of change that invalidates those assumptions and creates new work.
Example contract wording
Example contract wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
Happy to do a quick pass on the new homepage design for obvious SEO risks as part of the retainer. A full redesign review — on-page copy for the new structure, redirect mapping, and ongoing coordination with the design team through launch — is more involved than what the retainer scopes month to month. I'd suggest a fixed add-on for the redesign period ([$X]) so it's covered properly rather than absorbed into the regular deliverables.
How MarginFlow flags it
MarginFlow is deliberately cautious here — a light "can you take a quick look" request classifies inside_scope by design (false positives cost the relationship), while a request that implies ongoing involvement through a redesign process is flagged outside_scope with lower confidence and an explanation noting the ambiguity, so the account manager — not the AI — makes the judgment call on where exactly to draw the line for this client.