I tend to have a negative opinion of most SEO practices because they naturally seem to abuse either the code, the accessibility or the usability of a website (to try and shove everything out of the way for the search spiders). Which is why for my business I have decided to offer some natural SEO services which won’t impede the website to compensate for the chance a client might go and get my carefully written code vomited on. I would advise you to do the same… after all, if it’s in demand for your clients and you can get to grips with the techniques, it’s another solution you can offer (and be paid to do either on a single or reoccurring basis). 
Sometimes it’s best to just let them get on and do their job, then complain when they don’t achieve results.
My experience with SEO is, if you stop them from doing what they ask, when they achieve you naff all results, they’ll just blame you from stopping them from getting on with their job.
It is nearly always better to have the web dev and seo work both done by the same company, it is a bit unfortunate that you guys dont handle this stuff yourself in house. It makes it hard for the developer and the seo consultant when neither are familiar with each others work.
Thanks everyone for an excellent discussion. Lots of “reinforcement” in terms of the way we’re already thinking.
It would be good to hear from more SEO/marketing people on the subject (if any are reading this). If you feel that a client’s SEO/marketing objectives can be better achieved through code and/or content tweaking, what’s been your experience of working with the incumbent web company to get the changes done? What do you think should be best practice here, i.e. that results in a win-win-win outcome for yourselves, the mutual client, and the custodian of the code - the web developer?
Thanks again to all.
Agreed. Wish some of you guys would come and post in the SEO forum, this is a great thread full of reasoned well explained opinons, a real pleasure to read.
Don’t think I can add anything to the actual discussion that hasn’t already been said. Each instance of this situation needs to be addressed on it’s own merits and just about every approach I can think of has been covered by someone on this thread.
JJMcClure, I used to spend more time in the SEO forums but unfortunately there’s an ever increasing amount of fluff to push through to find the really interesting questions. It just became really frustrating to keep seeing questions like “What’s better PR or Alexia” or “How do I pollute social networks with my links” 
Agreed. However I would include a clause in your agreement that informs the client of a third party modifications, which states…“In the event of the site becoming unusable due to third party modifications, my fees are $X” (usually always higher than normal).
This way at least youre covered.
I do SEO regularly with good results. Yes, landing pages is new code but it is not changing their code. I do tweak the content of what is mentioned and where what is mentioned on their pages, but I don’t change their code. I also might add a small bit of code, but I’m not changing their code. Ok, I will add the alt in an image if it’s not there plus the info.
So there you have it, without going into a lot of detail.
Yup… Nothing wrong with that, IMO.
A punitive rate? Why?
Business is business, if they come back to you to have you fix up something that someone else broke, that’s a GOOD thing. Why punish them?
Don’t give up Alex! That will only increase the ratio of fluff to good posting. That’s the nature of SEO unfortunately, a LOT of underinformed opinions, myths and smoke and mirrors. You could certainly help preach the gospel of good markup and semantic design etc contributing to SEO.
I think part of the challenge here is once more than one party has ftp access, then immediately you’ve got a situation where you’ve got two people/entities with keys to the estate instead of one. Agreed - theoretically landing pages would normally be 100% separate from the main site, but the very fact that ftp access allows the possibility to accidentally/negatively impact the main site means that the automatic accountability of the developer, and only the developer (hackers notwithstanding!), for the integrity of the website, has changed.
Btw, if anyone’s interested, I’ve written a general article on this subject Itomic-the-Custodians-of-your-Online-Assets on our website.
Edit:
Link reinserted as it is very relevant to the thread subject
Spike
FTP access. FTP stands for “file transfer protocol”. A person with ftp access has the ability to really get stuck into the guts of your site. To use a motor vehicle analogy: CMS access is roughly comparable to your child sitting in your car and playing with all the dials when you’re not looking. My kids think this is a great game! FTP access is like your child opening up the hood/of your car, armed with a screwdriver and spanner. In knowledgeable hands, a screwdriver and a spanner can be perfectly compatible with your exposed car engine. In the wrong hands… well, you get the idea.
Love that, will probably use it for clients sometime!
Once design and development work has been completed in a website and everything is going fine, i don’t think access should given to anybody…I know that FTP details might be needed for SEO work but in this case a prior information should be given…As it is not easy to rectify the errors…
You should definitely have version control on your code, if you have third party developers working on it. You might want to have a QA step in between checking into the repository and moving the repository into production. You could arrange with your client that you act as a “gate keeper”, that checks all changes before publishing them.
I would just inform the client that we do charge to troubleshoot if for some reason our code gets broken as a result of the seo company’s code changes. Also, I do know a thing or two about seo and I would love to engage the client about the seo company’s plans as I have seen lots of clients get sabotaged by bad seo work.
Absolutely!
It also helps if you work in partnership with your clients so that they ask your opinion about plans that they have for SEO and/or other marketing ventures. Often times you can prevent them from spending money unnecessarily and at other times they can give you the heads-up about new products and services that are coming to the market.
Had a similar situation to this recently, and due to negative experiences with seo cowboys in the past we ask for the client and seo company to agree to fairly stringent conditions if the site is hosted by ourselves and they require access, to protect ourselves and the client.
We also log and monitor everything that gets changed, so that responsibility and liability can be attributed accurately if anything is broken, and so that access can be cut off if and when any ‘black hat’ or dubious modification gets carried out.
Good thread…
Personally I think SEO lay out should be done from the very beginning.
I looked at a site someone wanted me to work on a few months ago and both the footer and header had extra meta tags in them with links to a SEO company website and then stuffed full of seo and internet marketing keywords, Weird… like they spammed the code in the site. I passed on that job.
I would for sure distance myself from that and get it in writing that you are not responsible for any messes made by other people.