Automattic Jetpack SEO review

Easy-to-use module helps optimize your website for search engines

Jetpack SEO 21:9 Hero
(Image: © Automattic)

TechRadar Verdict

Jetpack SEO is an easy-to-use search engine optimization module with all the essential features you’d need for a simple website. However, it can seriously slow down your website performance, and it lacks several features prized by advanced developers.

Pros

  • +

    Easy to use

  • +

    Wealth of features

Cons

  • -

    Huge and bloated

  • -

    Lacks advanced SEO features

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Jetpack is a collection of powerful website management tools launched in 2011 and bundled together as a WordPress plugin. WordPress (or WordPress.org) is a free content management system (CMS) for blogs and websites. It should not be confused with WordPress.com, which is a paid hosting platform and website builder from the same founders.

To understand, let us first explain the difference between a content management system and a website builder. A website builder is an online app that allows you to design and launch simple websites with relative ease, whereas a content management system is a framework used to make the process of publishing content on a website a little easier.

Jetpack, as the name suggests, is a collection of tools that can supercharge any website. Its primary concept is to implement the features of a website builder like WordPress.com into the free content management system provided by WordPress.org. It consists of tools that help with security, analytics, performance, publishing, sharing, and more. 

For this review, we are going to focus specifically on the search engine optimization (SEO) features provided by Jetpack, which can help make a WordPress website easier to read for search engines like Google. Follow along for our Automattic Jetpack SEO review and see how well it stacks up against the best SEO tools for WordPress!

Automattic Jetpack SEO Review

Most of Jetpack’s core features are available for free, but higher tiers can be price (Image credit: Jetpack)

Plans and pricing

Jetpack is a free plugin for WordPress. Most of its core features are available free of charge. That said, users who want premium features can upgrade to one of their many paid subscription plans, which add bonus features along with priority support.

Jetpack offers nine different subscription plans categorized by different features and benefits. These plans come with additional features like daily backups, site search, malware protection, anti-spam, and much more to enhance your website’s functionality. 

The plans start at just $2 per month for Site Search to around $33 a month for Security Real-time. It should be noted, however, that all the search engine optimization features included in the plugin are available free of charge and do not require subscribing to any of these other plans. Jetpack SEO is essentially a free module included within the bigger plugin.

Automattic Jetpack SEO Review

Jetpack is made of various modules (Image credit: Jetpack)

Features

Jetpack is made up of various modules. You can enable or disable these modules from a centralized dashboard in WordPress. When enabled, they will provide additional functionality to your site. When disabled, they will no longer run on your site, and their code will be removed from your website. 

A few modules that come with Jetpack worth noting include security scanning, site backups, performance improvements, social sharing, add-on widgets, enhanced comments, and more. The search engine optimization module comes with features like WP.me short-links, site verification, XML sitemaps, and so on.

Jetpack SEO enables you to edit the search headline and meta description for every single page on your website, either individually or through predefined rule sets. XML sitemaps make your website easier to find, whereas site ownership verification helps ascertain for search engines that you are the owner of the website. 

Jetpack SEO also comes power-packed with a traffic tools module, which contains related features like site analytics and sharing stats to make the most out of your website content. It’s worth noting, however, that search engine previews are a premium feature and require a subscription to one of the paid plans. 

Automattic Jetpack SEO Review

Jetpack has a minimalistic gray and white interface  (Image credit: Jetpack)

Interface and in-use

Jetpack for WordPress features a minimalistic interface in gray and white. Buttons are displayed in bright green or sky blue, making them easy to navigate. First-time installers are greeted with a simple login wizard that lets them log in to the service using their WordPress or Google credentials. Once you’re in, you get to select a paid or free subscription plan and conclude your setup.

Jetpack offers you a unified dashboard with a tab-based navigation sorting the various modules into neat categories. Every module has its own separate section under Jetpack > Settings, letting you enable or disable them as you please using the built-in toggle buttons. There is also a separate analytics dashboard under Jetpack > Site Stats. It can be used to find out how much traffic your blog or website receives over any given time period.

Jetpack’s interface is highly intuitive and simple to use. It is also updated frequently as more features are added into the plugin. A convenient setup wizard makes it easy to decide which features to enable in case you aren’t an advanced user.

Automattic Jetpack SEO Review

Priority support is only available to paid subscribers (Image credit: Jetpack)

Support

Jetpack comes with a detailed knowledge base that’s open to all users. It can be used to browse for free resources on how to make the best use of the plugin. There’s even an active community forum where fellow users and customer support can help you figure out the solution to any problems you might encounter along the way. 

Priority support is only available to paid subscribers. It allows you to contact Jetpack’s support team directly. While this can result in a speedier resolution for websites with advanced needs, most users will find the free support offered via the knowledge base and community forum to be more than sufficient. 

The competition

There aren’t any single plugins that offer the same wealth of features that come with Jetpack. That said, Jetpack is known to cause bloating, a side effect of using heavy-duty plugins that causes your website to slow down. Various plugins offer one or more of the features that come with Jetpack. Used together, these plugins can offer the same functionality without slowing down your website.

Jetpack SEO, being a search engine optimization module, is rivaled by Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, and SEOPress—just to name a few. These plugins offer more advanced SEO features at a fraction of the cost. For example, they both also come with keyword research functionalities that help you see how well your blog post or website page is optimized for search engines.

Final verdict

Jetpack is a powerful collection of modules that can seriously enhance the functionality of your website. That said, it can slow down your website and is not worth using for the search engine optimization features alone. If you’re only looking for something like SEO, a dedicated plugin with more advanced features and less bloating is recommended. 

Ritoban Mukherjee

Ritoban Mukherjee is a freelance journalist from West Bengal, India. His work has been published on Tom's Guide, TechRadar, Creative Bloq, IT Pro Portal, Gizmodo, Medium, and Mental Floss. Ritoban is also a member of the National Association of Science Writers.