A technical SEO audit tells you what's broken. Remediation fixes it. These are different projects with different skills, stakeholders, and scope risks — but agencies routinely bundle them together and pay for it later.
The audit takes 20 hours and produces a prioritised list of 80 issues. The client assumes "SEO remediation" means fixing all 80. Your team planned to fix 15 critical issues. Development resources weren't scoped. QA wasn't budgeted. And nobody defined what "fixed" means for each issue type.
Remediation scope needs to define: which issues, who implements, how fixes are verified, and what happens when fixing one thing breaks another.
Who this is for
- SEO agencies delivering technical fixes after audits
- Teams coordinating between SEO specialists and developers
- Account managers scoping remediation projects with client development teams
- Consultants who audit but need to scope the fix phase separately
Variables that drive remediation scope
| Variable | Impact |
|---|---|
| Issue count and severity | 15 critical issues vs 80 mixed-severity — different project |
| Implementation model | Agency fixes vs agency directs client's developers |
| Platform access | Direct CMS/code access vs ticket-based development queue |
| Development resources | Dedicated developer vs shared resource with competing priorities |
| QA process | SEO team verifies vs client verifies vs automated monitoring |
| Staging environment | Available vs not — affects testing workflow and risk |
| Deployment process | Continuous deployment vs scheduled releases |
Remediation priority framework
| Priority | Definition | Target timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | Blocking indexation or causing significant traffic loss (noindex on key pages, broken canonical chains, robots.txt blocking sections) | Week 1–2 |
| High | Impacting rankings or crawl efficiency (redirect chains, duplicate content, missing structured data) | Week 2–4 |
| Medium | Performance or UX issues with SEO impact (Core Web Vitals failures, mobile issues, image optimisation) | Month 2 |
| Low | Best-practice improvements with incremental benefit (breadcrumb schema, minor internal linking, hreflang refinements) | Month 2–3 |
Scope definition
- Reference audit report (document ID and date)
- Issues in scope (list specific issues or "all Critical and High priority items")
- Maximum issue count (e.g., "up to 25 issues")
- Implementation model (agency implements / agency directs / hybrid)
- Platforms and environments in scope
Implementation process
- Issue prioritisation and sprint planning (with client sign-off)
- Implementation in [staging/production] environment
- Per-issue documentation (what was changed, where, why)
- QA verification after each fix
- Post-deployment monitoring for regressions
Developer coordination (if agency directs)
- Issue tickets written by SEO team with specific requirements
- Ticket format: issue description, current state, required state, verification steps
- SEO team reviews implementation before deployment
- Maximum [X] rounds of revision per ticket
- Response time: client development team responds within [X] business days
Deliverables
- Remediation tracker (spreadsheet with issue, status, owner, verification)
- Per-issue implementation notes or tickets
- QA verification log (before/after for each fix)
- Post-remediation summary report
- Verification crawl comparing pre/post audit metrics
- Walkthrough meeting ([X] minutes)
Exclusions
- Issues not identified in the reference audit
- New feature development or site redesign
- Content changes (content-related issues scoped separately)
- Ongoing technical monitoring after remediation window
- Third-party tool configuration or procurement
- Server infrastructure changes (hosting, CDN, DNS)
- Fixes requiring design or UX changes
Timeline
- Sprint planning: [X] business days
- Implementation sprints: [X]-week sprints, [Y] sprints total
- QA per sprint: [X] business days
- Verification crawl: [X] business days after final sprint
- Summary report: [X] business days after verification
Remediation effort by issue type
| Issue type | Typical effort | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Redirect chain cleanup | 15–30 min per chain | Bulk-update if server access available |
| Canonical tag fixes | 10–20 min per template | Template-level fix vs page-level fix matters |
| Robots.txt updates | 30–60 min total | Simple but high-risk — test in staging |
| XML sitemap fixes | 1–3 hours | Depends on CMS generation vs manual |
| Structured data implementation | 1–3 hours per schema type | JSON-LD preferred, template-level |
| Core Web Vitals fixes | 2–8 hours per issue | Image optimisation vs layout shift vs JS — varies enormously |
| Internal linking restructure | 2–4 hours per cluster | Navigation changes need stakeholder approval |
| Hreflang implementation | 4–12 hours | Scales with number of languages/regions |
How RuleDox helps
Remediation scope follows directly from audit findings — but the translation from "issues found" to "implementation project" is where scope gaps emerge. Different issue types need different effort, different owners, and different verification.
With RuleDox:
- Issue count and severity set project size — critical-only remediation is scoped differently from full-sweep
- Implementation model changes deliverables — agency-implements includes code changes; agency-directs includes tickets and review cycles
- QA and verification sections auto-populate — verification crawl and regression monitoring always included
- Exclusions prevent scope expansion — "new feature development" and "content changes" are excluded by default
FAQ
Should remediation be scoped with the audit or separately? Separately. The audit is diagnostic; remediation is implementation. Bundling them creates scope ambiguity — the client thinks they're paying for fixes, and you think you're delivering a report. Scope the audit first, then use findings to scope remediation.
How do I handle issues that need developer resources I don't control? Scope your deliverable as tickets and verification, not implementation. Define the ticket format, response time expectations, and review process. Make it clear that implementation timeline depends on client development capacity — and that delays don't extend your scope.
What if fixing one issue creates new issues? This is normal in technical SEO. Scope a verification crawl after each sprint and budget 10–15% contingency hours. If regression issues exceed contingency, they become a change request — not silent scope expansion.