SEMrush

SEMrush is a paid SEO platform with deep keyword and traffic data. SEO Dash uses the SEMrush API to enrich the Backlinks page, Keywords page, and per-site authority metrics on /overview.

What you get

• Authority Score: SEMrush's 0-100 domain quality metric (combines backlink profile, traffic, and spam signals)
• Backlinks: referring domains, anchor text, follow / nofollow split
• Organic keywords: keywords your site ranks for, with monthly search volume and current position
• Traffic estimates: modeled organic traffic, by country if your subscription includes it

Getting your API key

1. Sign in to SEMrush: you need a paid plan with API access (Guru plan or higher).
2. Open Profile → API units in the top-right menu.
3. Copy the API key from that page. (It starts with letters and digits, no sk- prefix.)

Adding it to SEO Dash

1. Settings → SEO Data
2. Paste the key into the SEMrush API Key field
3. Click Save
4. Visit any site's /overview page. The SEMrush card on the right surfaces authority + estimated traffic within ~30 seconds.

How units are spent

SEMrush meters every API call against your monthly unit allocation. SEO Dash is conservative:

• Per-page loads: none. We cache previously fetched authority data and serve it from SQLite.
• Manual refresh (button on /overview): one call per metric (authority, backlinks, top keywords).
• Scheduled fact refresh (cron): once per site per week, runs only if the cached data is stale.

A typical 10-site setup spends ~30 units per week.

Troubleshooting

• 403 errors: quota exhausted for the period, or your plan doesn't include API access. The dashboard falls back to cached values.
• Empty traffic numbers: your plan may not include traffic analytics. Backlinks and keywords still work.
• Mismatched country traffic: SEMrush defaults to US; the integration follows that. Per-country views require a paid Guru+ plan and a future SEO Dash setting (on the roadmap).

Combined views

The Backlinks page deduplicates between Ahrefs / Moz / SEMrush / Majestic by source domain. Same for the Keywords page. Whichever providers you've configured all show side-by-side; if numbers diverge (they often do, since different crawl frequencies and index sizes apply), you'll see each source labeled clearly.