At Tudor Lodge Consultants, we are hugely proud to announce that we are now working with the brand new, regulated lending platform Stepstone Credit. Stepstone is an innovative way of using short term credit via online and mobile application use. Unlike traditional and existing payday and short-term credit options, Stepstone is a credit facility as opposed to a loan. This means that users of their service apply for a credit facility of up to £500 and are only required to pay back what is actually used.
Additionally, because they use bank scrape technology that, with the borrower’s permission lets Stepstone view 3 months of bank transactions, one’s financial past doesn’t dictate their future. Borrowers who are financially sound, but may have a CCJ or small grey area on their credit history are not automatically rejected as with other lenders, as Stepstone looks at overall affordability rather than rudimentary credit pasts.
Also, due to its nature, Stepstone can be used to improve credit ratings by demonstrating responsible borrowing; something looked upon very favourably by credit providers. However, Stepstone have previously had no online presence and have therefore not been found online at all.
What We Are Doing
Unique to Stepstone as a credit provider, is their use of ‘bank scrape’ technology, making for more accurate lending decisions. For example, someone may take out a facility of £500, yet only spend £200. In such cases, the borrower would only repay the £200 plus interest, with the remaining £300 there for as and when they need it. We have been working with the development team at Stepstone Credit to create a website that is fit for purpose and fully functional and discoverable by potential users online.
Initially, we carried out the ‘discovery’ phase of the project, researching what other short term lenders are around in the UK and which search terms are being targeted through Google Search. Having compiled a comprehensive list of terms and targets for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) targeting, our content team set about planning a range of landing pages; rich with content and engaging information for users and online customers.
Further to the landing pages produced, we have created and implemented a number of additional content pages; fully SEO-compliant to help increase Stepstone’s online rankings.
We have also updated the website code, including that of their Schema mark up to allow for efficient and accurate crawling of the Stepstone website by search engines. Fully optimised and Google friendly meta data has also been implemented throughout the website on all pages. We are also beginning a focused link building and online PR strategy to push out Stepstone’s product and brand to increased numbers of users.
We also continue to work very closely with Stepstone Credit’s development and online design teams to ensure the website in all areas is kept up to date and fully optimised for online and search engines alike.
What We Have Achieved
In the short time since commencing our work with Stepstone, we have seen them climb online for many terms including some highly competitive terms such as ‘short term loans’ and ‘payday loan alternative’ amongst other, hugely competitive terms. We are also seeing increased in brand related terms for Stepstone, allowing returning users to find and engage with this exciting product and brand.
We look forward to progressing further into 2018 with the team at Stepstone Credit.