Connect Semrush to Claude Cowork
Give Claude Cowork governed access to Semrush’s 23 tools through Runlayer, with identity, policy, scanning, and audit on every call.
Set up
Add Semrush to Claude Cowork in four steps
Admins approve the server once. Everyone in Claude Cowork then gets it through the same governed connection.
- 1
Add Semrush to Runlayer
Semrush isn’t in the Runlayer catalog yet, so an admin adds it by its MCP server URL.
Adding a connector manually - 2
Connect Claude Cowork to Runlayer
Claude Cowork gets connector tools through the Runlayer Plugin. With direct tool listing turned on for your deployment, Semrush’s 23 tools show up in Claude Cowork’s own tool list.
Claude Cowork setup guide - 3
Sign in to Semrush
Sign in the way Semrush requires. Runlayer holds the credentials so they stay out of the client’s configuration.
- 4
Use Semrush from Claude Cowork
Semrush’s approved tools appear in Claude Cowork. Every call is checked against policy and recorded.
Tools
23 Semrush tools in Claude Cowork
Runlayer policy decides which of these Claude Cowork users can call.
Audience research
Audience Analytics: visitor profile of a domain — demographics (age, gender, income, education, household size, occupation), audience interests, visitor geography by country, audience overlap between…
Backlink research
Backlink profile analysis: referring domains, anchor texts, authority scores, link growth history, and competitor link comparison.
Backlinks research
Backlink Analytics: for a single domain's link profile — backlinks, referring domains and IPs, anchor texts, geographic and TLD distribution, Authority Score breakdown, domain and referring-domain…
Competitors research
Competitive Research: find who competes with a domain in organic search, paid search, and Google Shopping (PLA); compare keyword overlap and backlink profiles between multiple domains; analyze market…
Domain overview
Get high-level counters for a domain, subdomain, subfolder, or URL — Semrush Rank, keyword/traffic/cost totals, PLA, SERP Features.
Execute report
Execute any Semrush report.
Get report schema
Get a report's parameters.
Keyword research
Keyword Analytics: look up any keyword — search volume, CPC, competition, keyword difficulty, SERP results (organic and paid), related keywords, broad match variations, phrase questions, and ads…
Control
What Runlayer can see and stop in Claude Cowork
Some controls apply to every client at the gateway. Others depend on what Claude Cowork exposes to Runlayer.
Gateway policy (available)
Every Semrush call from Claude Cowork passes through Runlayer, where your policies can allow, alert, mask, or block it.
Audit trail (available)
Each call is recorded with the user, Claude Cowork as the client, the tool, and the policy and scanner decisions.
Anthropic inference hooks (available)
Anthropic Inference hooks let Runlayer check Claude Cowork prompts before inference.
OTLP telemetry (available)
Claude Cowork can send supported OpenTelemetry events to Runlayer for observe-only session visibility.
Stop a call before it runs (available)
Runlayer can reject a Claude Cowork prompt before Anthropic runs it, which stops the whole request rather than one tool call.
Block output after it runs (available)
Because Runlayer checks the full prompt, tool results in it can be blocked before the model sees them.
Redact output in place (not available)
Runlayer cannot mask content in Claude Cowork. The gateway still applies policy to the call.
In Claude Cowork
- Cowork session data sent over OpenTelemetry is for monitoring only and cannot stop anything.
Frequently asked questions
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