Is It Out of Scope? — Web development
Is keyword tracking out of scope for a web development project?
Yes. Rank tracking and SEO reporting are unrelated to building the site's technical infrastructure.
A dev client occasionally asks whether the team can "keep an eye on" keyword rankings, sometimes because a basic analytics setup was part of the build and the request feels adjacent.
Is it out of scope?
Yes. Keyword rank tracking is SEO reporting, a different discipline from the technical build and analytics setup work that may have been scoped.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Exclusions clause→ — The engagement covers development work — SEO rank tracking and reporting are excluded as a separate discipline.
Example contract wording
Example contract wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
Tracking keyword rankings is outside development work — that's an SEO reporting service. What we can do is make sure analytics is set up correctly to feed whatever tool ends up tracking that.
How MarginFlow flags it
MarginFlow flags keyword-tracking requests outside_scope on development contracts, distinguishing them from analytics-setup requests that are legitimate technical deliverables when they're actually in the SOW.