Ian Hopkinson was frustrated with the music industry when he turned around to launch Mad Scientist Digital.

The digital agency has built over 500 websites in 12 years and has been involved in countless social media and content campaigns. These days, they specialize in understanding how the Internet works. Some know it as SEO, but it means more than that.

Mad Scientist takes a consultative approach to client onboarding. In a way, Hopkinson saw this as his service to rescue her website for a client. Many new clients struggled to understand what their previous agencies were doing and had major problems measuring the effectiveness of their previous campaigns and websites.

With measurement and effectiveness in mind, we’ve put together a dozen or so tools to analyze your client’s website. The mad scientist then weaved this data together to create constructive feedback for the client. Some call this an advanced website audit.

They reached a point where Hopkinson and his team had extensive experience auditing client websites, and external tools alone weren’t enough.

At that stage, four to five years ago, Hopkinson began working on a tool to replace all the audit tools it was using. It took him several years of creative brains and a lot of trial and error, but now his new business glossary is born.

Hopkinson thinks this is a big deal and their tools are unique. They don’t see it as a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) audit tool, but rather as a pioneer in the Search Engine Impact (SEI) field.

“This is more than just an SEO tool. We see it as a tool that helps us build trust not only with our customers, but with Google,” says Hopkinson.

The word “trust” is often used in their tools. This is because we also know that Google is moving in that direction.

“People looking for SEO get all these technical things from agencies, but they don’t realize that Google is moving towards a more authoritative storytelling experience.”

This tool integrates over 30 signals from your site and those of your competitors. These signals are organized into 7 simple key areas displayed in an impressive dashboard. Most importantly, the dashboard links you to actionable steps you can take to make things better.

These data points are also tracked over time in historical charts.

Many of his competitors blame Google and its algorithm updates for the failed campaign. Google is known to update its algorithms 600 times a year, so Hopkinson tries to update the tool at a predictable interval twice a year. These updates include new technologies, strategies, and algorithmic updates from search engines.

Terminology has audited over 10,500 websites to date. The forever free plan allows anyone to audit your site for free, but you’ll have to pay $10 a month to compare your site against the competition.

He said the tool can provide site feedback in less than a minute, whether the site starts with a few pages or has hundreds of pages.

Hopkinson says no site is 100% perfect. For example, the tech giant Apple said he is 89 years old.

Of the thousands of sites the tool has already evaluated, the overall average score was 26, but as Hopkinson says, “It doesn’t mean much until you look at industry averages or compare to your closest competitors. .”

Some industries are very close. Meyer is 48% and David Jones is 47%. But in sectors such as supermarkets, IGA is his 42%, well behind Coles’ 61%, Woolworth’s 55% and Aldi’s 51%.

A/NZ lags behind in the banking sector with 58% compared to Westpac’s 68%, CommBank’s 66% and NAB’s 65%.

The big four consultancies were also closely followed, with EY at 77%, PwC and Deloitte at 76%, and KPMG at 70%.

Benchmarks are important, Hopkinson said, but it’s more important to drill down into the specific actions you need to take to improve your online standing, and the tool offers actionable advice for your unique situation. do this.

Most of Mad Scientist Digital’s clients are Australian, but Terminology Tools has clients in Asia Pacific and beyond. Many of these clients are his web developers or other agencies who want to audit their clients’ sites.

Hopkinson sees all of this as a way to democratize digital marketing and simplify the digital economy for business.

He and the glossary team plan to create other simple tools in the future. Look forward to it, he said.

You can explore the tool here.