Is It Out of Scope? — SEO & marketing
Is writing documentation for the client's dev team out of scope for an SEO retainer?
Yes. Writing technical handoff documentation has no connection to search strategy work.
An uncommon ask, but it surfaces when the client's dev team wants a written record of technical SEO changes made and asks the SEO team to document it for their engineers.
Is it out of scope?
Yes, if what's being asked for goes beyond a normal reporting cadence — formal technical documentation for an engineering audience is a distinct writing deliverable, not standard SEO reporting.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Exclusions clause→ — Formal technical documentation for a dev team goes beyond an SEO retainer's standard reporting and analysis deliverables.
Example contract wording
Example contract wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
I can summarize the technical SEO changes in our regular reporting, but formal documentation written for your dev team is a bit beyond this retainer — happy to scope that separately.
How MarginFlow flags it
MarginFlow flags formal dev-documentation requests outside_scope on SEO contracts, distinguishing them from the retainer's normal reporting deliverables.