You do an SEO audit and provide a report to a client for a fixed amount of money. You thought your work was done. But no. The client wants you to fix up the main problems in the report before you can discuss further work.
A few days later, you hear back from your client about the audit you completed. They say that before you can move on to your next project, you need to fix a few things on the most important pages.
Soon enough, the so-called “easy fixes” turn into a mountain of additional work that will take several more weeks to implement, as the client also wants content changes and wants to know why certain pages aren’t listed in Google, even though they were submitted for crawling weeks ago.
The problem here is not the client’s request. The problem is that the client and the SEO consultant didn’t agree on the audit scope, the fixes to implement based on the audit, or what other work was needed.
Finding SEO Problems and Fixing Them Are Different Jobs
This type of audit will highlight areas of the website that require attention with respect to technical SEO such as crawlability, indexability, internal linking, redirects, metadata, etc.
Within the scope of the audit, the consultant can use tools such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider to investigate hundreds, if not thousands, of URLs, identify potential issues, and use Google Search Console to see how Google interacts with the website.
Tools such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider allow you to explore hundreds, if not thousands, of URLs. Search Console provides insight into the interactions between your website and Google. And Ahrefs / Semrush can help identify potential organic search opportunities and weaknesses on your website.
In other words, collecting information to diagnose potential SEO problems doesn’t automatically mean you can implement every potential recommendation for the client.
Finding 60 pages with no meta descriptions (as an example) can be done within Screaming Frog’s time limits. Writing meta descriptions for each of those pages to add value would require significant time to research each page and its search intent. Adding meta descriptions would also require WordPress access to add the new metadata and get it approved. Then, you’d also need to check that the metadata had updated correctly on the live site.
When an independent contractor’s original quote for an SEO audit included only the work to research and create recommendations for a client, it is best to have a separate quote and agreement for the implementation of the work identified in the audit report.
In cases where a separate implementation phase will be necessary for the recommended SEO work, you should clearly outline the scope of services to be provided and corresponding rate in the new agreement. As an independent consultant based in the US, you can use Wave’s free invoice generator to create an itemized invoice for approved services. This gives the client a clear breakdown of the additional work and its costs, reducing the chances of misunderstandings when payment becomes due.
The following typical SEO tasks show the different stages of audit findings for SEO work.
| Audit finding | Potential implementation work |
| Broken internal links | Identify appropriate destinations and update affected pages |
| Redirect chains | Review existing redirect rules and implement corrections |
| Duplicate title tags | Research, rewrite, approve, and publish new titles |
| Indexing issues | Investigate causes and coordinate the required technical fixes |
| Weak internal linking | Identify relevant pages and add contextual links |
The problem is that some consultants may include some implementation in the audit they sell you as part of their package. Others may sell you the audit as a separate service and then come back to you and quote for the work.
And no, both methods can be bad for you. As long as you clearly outline in your contract what you are going to deliver in your audit and what extra work they will have to pay for, then it doesn’t matter whether you implement the recommendations from your audit in the audit itself or as a completely separate service.
How a Few Small Requests Become Weeks of Extra Work
This example considers a hypothetical audit of a medium-sized WordPress website with several hundred pages, with a technical review of the reasons behind the decline in organic traffic.
After completing the crawl of the consultant’s tool of choice and reviewing current Search Engine data from Search Console (e.g., Google Search Console), such as rankings and click-throughs, the consultant will then complete a detailed report of his or her findings. The report will include a prioritized list of problems that need to be addressed in order to improve the SEO of the website.
The first request to fix a few small things, like 3 redirects, seems reasonable, and the consultant agrees to make the changes because the relationship is still in its early stages.
The redirects were set up with different plugins on different hosting configurations. So, for example, 3 redirects may have been set up with a plugin like Manual Redirects, and another 10 with another plugin. And in each of those cases, there may be different rules set up, and other URLs that use those rules as well.
In other words, the consultant is asked to find out why Google has not indexed other groups of pages on the website and, in some cases, even to fix the problem, possibly in cooperation with the developer of the website.
A week or so later, the same consultant talks with the client’s marketing manager about making some content changes, too.
Although each request appears to be a minor enhancement, the total work required to address all the Small Requests can exceed the scope of the original project.
And because the consultant has started to make changes to the site before clarifying who is going to do what in terms of implementing the solutions to the problems that were found in the audit, the client assumes that implementation was included in the audit.
The Consultant may also assume that additional work will form part of a future paid project. Neither assumption establishes a clear commercial agreement.
As was mentioned previously, in Technical SEO it is necessary to carefully assess information provided by Google with regard to the process of how Google’s web crawlers ‘crawl’ websites, and the process of ‘indexing’ web pages, and associated Search Engine Controls, all of which are defined and explained within Google’s Search Engine Crawling and Indexing documentation.
A page that is not indexed in Search Console does not necessarily mean that there is some technical defect with the page. Sometimes pages are intentionally not indexed (e.g., password-protected pages, outdated pages, etc.). Other times, it requires further investigation to understand why Google hasn’t indexed the page.
Work guaranteed to resolve every problem with the indexing of pages is usually impossible to deliver, because in most cases no work at all would be needed to get them listed. Even after addressing crawling issues, Google still isn’t guaranteed to index every relevant page on a website.
Then the consultant has enough time to identify the error(s) and describe what the new work will achieve.
Why the Original Audit Agreement Matters
Defining deliverables before an audit is the best way to prevent a consultant from doing unpaid implementation work.
Before the audit commences, it’s best to agree the deliverables of the audit as detailed in the original audit agreement, such as the areas reviewed, the tools and methods used (where appropriate), and the output such as a written report and any other findings, and also if any implementation work is included in the audit scope or not and treated as separate paid work.
Also, set out how additional services can be requested and approved.
An example of a technical audit package is a Screaming Frog crawl, Search Console analysis, and an assessment of major technical problems on a website, with a prioritized report of recommended actions.
The client receives the investigation results and a full explanation of the findings. All subsequent work on the website to address the issues found is priced separately and agreed in full.
By setting these boundaries up front, the consultant can still be very helpful without taking on extra, potentially costly work for the client.
Broad deliverables can lead to many problems. A proposal promising to ‘identify and resolve technical SEO issues’ can be seen as including the implementation of any required changes by the consultant. This is not necessarily the intention of the consultant.
More precise wording avoids that ambiguity.
The proposal would state that the work consists of identifying technical SEO issues affecting the client’s website and delivering a report outlining recommended fixes for any identified problems. The cost of implementing any recommended fixes would be estimated separately and charged accordingly.
This should also outline what happens if any critical issues are found during the review of the website, and how these will be reported to the client.
An example of where this process adds value is an incorrect robots.txt configuration that prevents search engines from crawling important parts of a website. The consultant needs to inform the client quickly of the problem and its risk. However, changing a website’s production settings can require extra work, including authorization, proper access to the file, and sometimes even cooperation from the development team.
Separating Additional Services From Corrections
It is also important to distinguish between extra services the consultant offers and corrections included in the original scope of work.
Your inaccuracy is outside the scope of the work that you were commissioned to complete and therefore would not form part of any additional services that you may complete for the client.
Content Re-writes, Server Config Re-Writes, Full Implementation Projects (e.g. creating new content, building an out-of-Scope data feed) would typically be quoted for separately.
Distinguishing between additional services and corrections to original work will make future discussions much easier for both parties.
Document Additional Work Before Starting It
Once you have a client who wants something outside the parameters of the audit they initially purchased, you need to define what the task will entail so you can add it to your scope of work.
A simple written confirmation may be sufficient for simple work. This will need to be reflected in the original agreement.
The consultant and the client need to agree on the expected deliverables, the agreed-upon price, and the set time frame.
In order to provide a clear quote for fixing internal links on a client’s website, you first need to get a handle on the number of URLs you’ll need to change, the number of pages that need fixing, and how the pages in question were created (e.g., in a CMS, or in HTML).
The actual work needed can differ greatly from what the client believes.
State the number of affected pages in the change request, the work to be done, the corresponding charge, and whether verification afterward is included in the scope of work.
Once the client agrees to additional work, the freelancer must schedule time to complete the task and send an invoice for the agreed-upon work according to the payment terms previously agreed to for that type of work.
This also helps avoid negotiating additional work while you are in the midst of completing other agreed-upon work.
Similarly, you need to distinguish between additional keyword research work and updating internal links to existing pages. Such additional work needs to be evaluated separately by you before you commit to it.
Tracking Approved Work and Additional Charges
A project management platform (like Asana or Trello) can be really helpful for tracking the tasks that have been approved for completion as well as the associated deadlines and responsible parties. For very small, single-person projects (e.g., simple freelance work), even a shared Google Sheet can be used to track these details.
It is very important to distinguish between discussed work, approved work, and completed work.
Financial records should reflect the same distinction.
An invoice must clearly state what services you’re charging for. This goes for all payments, including for SEO work that was discussed in general terms. Itemized descriptions of the work completed at a freelancer’s rate let the client see exactly where their money goes, and the freelancer see which projects take more time than others.
This also lets the freelancer or consultant see whether they have been paying too much attention to certain types of work and whether other types are taking up more time than they anticipated.
To give other freelancers working to transition out of marketplaces like Upwork/Fiverr a sense of how their current tooling to manage payment and milestones for various types of work compares to how they might manage a more direct client relationship for the same work, I’d compare the tools for managing payment and for managing milestones between various freelancing platforms.
Build a Better Handoff Between Auditing and Implementation
Simply giving a client a long list of things they need to fix in their web presence isn’t enough. You need to provide a prioritized report, then explain what it takes to implement the recommendations.
This is much more useful than producing a long list of potential website problems that the client may struggle to use.
For example, hundreds of duplicate meta descriptions on a website could be flagged in an audit report alongside an incorrect noindex directive on several important service pages, and even though the former is undesirable, the latter is a more serious problem that needs to be fixed immediately because it prevents the affected pages from being included in Google’s search index.
A client’s website may have hundreds of duplicate meta descriptions, but an incorrect noindex directive on several important service pages is more urgent and could immediately prevent those pages from appearing in Google’s search index.
This is also why the consultant should highlight the differences in the required measures and indicate which measures require access to the developer’s system, content changes, etc.
By completing the audit, you can then go on to offer further work to the client as appropriate.
It is up to the client to decide whether to implement some of the recommendations internally, to assign others to a developer, and to have the SEO consultant implement the rest of them.
A simple plan to implement the findings of your audit could include a list of tasks to complete (e.g., “Internal link reformating”, “Update meta descriptions on home page”), who is responsible for each, what deliverables are expected, who needs to approve each, and an estimate of how long each task will take.
These stages can be supported with existing tools such as Google Search Console to identify and investigate why a page isn’t indexed, and Screaming Frog to verify changes to internal links, redirects, and metadata.
Likewise, you can discuss these tools in the context of SEO productivity and research workflows, highlighting how to choose the right tool for a given task rather than simply adding more tools.
Verify what you were contracted to do. Verify that what was contracted to do was actually done.
Verifying Changes Before Closing the Project
For example, if you made changes to a set of URLs that had redirects updated, verify that the new URL was redirected to the correct destination URL. Use HTTP status codes to test if the new URL is set up correctly, and use a new crawl of your site to test internal linking by verifying that links to correctly configured URLs now link to the intended page.
Verify what is agreed to verify within the scope of the work and do not let it creep into becoming further ongoing search performance monitoring work.
Inform the client of all work that was done in the handover to the client, and of all issues that remain to be resolved in the search performance change of the client. Specify whether or not the client has commissioned additional monitoring.
Don’t Let Your Next Audit Become Another Unpaid Project
A good SEO audit can reveal more work than the client bargained for, but the client still needs to address the issues uncovered. Developers, content editors, and the SEO consultant can spend several weeks coordinating to implement the required changes.
While the auditor may have identified problems with a client’s website, that does not necessarily mean the auditor will complete all recommended actions to fix them.
Clearly outlining deliverables, documenting approvals, and distinguishing between the original agreement and additional services is crucial. This also serves the consultant’s best interests, as clear information ensures the consultant can charge clients appropriately for the work they want done.
No. A well-defined audit does not necessarily become a paid project. It just gives the client a plan. The team can then agree on the plan’s implementation separately and assign the necessary resources and accountability.
A good audit is a good plan for a client. Separate implementation with the appropriate resources is needed for good to happen.
