I currently work full time at a premium Digital Marketing agency and got my first freelance gig a few weeks ago through Upwork - only a short one-off project to earn some extra money over the weekend. I wasn't sure about what rates to offer and might have undersold myself (my own fault) and now I feel like I'm being taken advantage of.
The project was to generate 700 meta titles & descriptions based on keyword research, which I did to a high standard using best SEO practices. I was proud of the quality of the work and this is work that I do on a daily basis for clients. The client sent me an excel sheet with URLs and asked that I populated the other fields and sent it back, which I did.
The client then told me that the work 'wasn't acceptable' and listed several changes she wanted implemented that are bad SEO practice such as keyword stuffing, using the full character limit on tags and descriptions on the whole website. I explained why some of her points weren't a good idea but to avoid coming across as patronising or lazy I agreed to implement some of the changes she had suggested. Then when I resubmitted the piece of work, after spending more time than expected/agreed on it and effectively submitting a poorer piece of work on the back of her suggestions - to which she still wasn't happy with. She wanted the brand name removed from all title tags - again further bad practice. I've implemented these changes again and sent it back but I have a strong feeling that she is going to come back again and say that she wants further changes that will compromise the quality of the data. I've also explained why I don't agree with the changes she wants implementing. I've also sent her an official Google webmaster blog about writing good snippets for search results. In the least patronising way, I do not think that she knows much about SEO and I cannot continue changing this document when it is consuming so much more of my time and decreasing in value as a result! I would never recommend such bad practices to a client.
She is also requesting that I send her a document with the keyword research. This was never outlined in the proposal, I am very much a pen-and-paper type of person - the research influenced my work heavily but for a keyword analysis report I would have charged much more.
The funds are held in escrow and not released until the client approves of the work, does anyone think I have grounds to raise a dispute?
