Hello. My name is Gert Hattingh and I’m a technical SEO, web designer, novice coder, e-sport fanatic, sushi lover.
My career started in design, doing various design projects for clients in an agency environment, dealing directly with clients. As my skills evolved in the digital space, I started getting into coding and web development, building a couple of websites and e-commerce shops.
My love for digital marketing expanded and SEO is where I found myself a couple of years later. Search intrigued me as it had the best of both worlds, the technical (coding) aspect as well as the marketing aspect of it. Since I’ve been involved in SEO since 2013 I’ve never looked back. It’s my passion and being able to pay rent and eat for living out my passion is a massive bonus.
Studied at CTU, completing my FET: Design Foundation course. Mainly design / basic website development.
Studied for my second year at CTU, completing my FET: Systems Development. Mainly web development languages such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySQL, jQuery etc.
I studied at CTU for my third year, completing my FET: System Developer (MCPD). Mainly focusing on general good development practices and languages such as C#, ASP.NET, SQL etc.
My duties included building Wordpress, Joomla, OpenCart, Magento and custom HTML websites for clients in various niches. I also handled basic SEO campaigns for a select few clients as well as a couple of PPC (Google Adwords) campaigns.
I started a digital agency with a partner called Oneclickhere. We offered various packages for website design, e-commerce, SEO, social and paid advertising. In the brief time while running the business, we served over 15 happy clients. Most clients converting from my SEO efforts. This is where I feel I learned most of what I know about SEO as 50% of my daily tasks consisted out of SEO projects for Oneclickhere.
I worked in a team of developers where I was responsible for building out initial static user interfaces for a tour operator booking system. I designed and coded AngularJS based dashboards, mainly focusing on UX. I was also tasked with designing and developing an alpha version of their new website. I also created a digital marketing strategy and executed the first couple of phases of this by defining the brands image, managing social media platforms, putting steps in place for good SEO practices to be followed and initial keyword research for search.
My duties include handling all technical SEO aspects of Travelstart's 16 markets, keyword research, all on-page SEO, training to new recruits, managing a junior SEO and working with our development department to ensure SEO is top-of-mind during all new feature releases.
Managing a team of 10 SEO specialists. Developing and executing on SEO strategies for various markets, including South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, UAE, Kenya and Turkey.
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I think it's pretty appropriate for this blog to start out with a classic "Hello World!" post. Hey, I'm Gert, nice to e-meet you and thanks for checking out my…