Scope Creep Examples — SEO & marketing
A request to diagnose a different site's problem entirely
The client asks the SEO team to investigate why a sister brand's completely separate website — never part of the engagement — is losing traffic.
The retainer scopes SEO for one specific domain. The client mentions, almost in passing, that a sister brand's separate website — different domain, different team, never part of any agreement — has seen a traffic drop, and asks if the team can take a look since "you're already deep in our analytics anyway." It's a different property with its own history, backlink profile, and technical setup that the team has no visibility into.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Deliverables clause→ — Scoped to the one domain named in the agreement — a separate brand's separate website, however related the companies are, isn't included.
Suggested change-order wording
Suggested change-order wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
Our retainer is scoped specifically to [domain], and we don't have access or history on the sister brand's site to diagnose this properly without real audit time. Happy to put together a one-time technical audit as a separate scoped project if that'd help pinpoint the cause — want me to send over a quote for that?
How this usually resolves
A quick, unpaid glance almost never produces a useful answer for a real traffic drop — it takes an actual audit to say anything credible, so most agencies decline the informal version and offer the paid one instead, which also tends to be the more genuinely helpful path for the client.
Related reading