Backlink Audit via DataForSEO

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Auditing a site's backlink profile before an SEO campaign
• Spotting over-optimized anchor text or a suspicious link mix
• Checking whether new and lost backlinks are trending up or down

Example prompts

• “Run a backlink audit on example.com.”
• “How healthy is the anchor text profile for mystore.com? Flag any over-optimization.”
• “Which referring domains carry the most authority for acme.io, and are there toxic links?”

Requirements

• A DataForSEO account with an API login and password
• The shared seo skill scripts installed in `~/.claude/skills/seo/`
• Network access to the DataForSEO API
• Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): Bash, Write

Workflow steps

7 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Parse login: and password: from their message.
2. 2Write them to ~/.claude/skills/seo/.env
3. 3chmod 600 ~/.claude/skills/seo/.env
4. 4Run a verification call: ~/.claude/skills/seo/scripts/keyword_research.py volume "test"
5. 5If verification succeeds (real JSON returned): tell the user "✅ Credentials verified. Running your command now..." and proceed with the…
6. 6If status 40104 — Please verify your account: tell the user to verify their account at https://app.dataforseo.com/, then say "continue" to…
7. 7If any other auth error: ask them to double-check the API password (the long alphanumeric string from…

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 67ac4f0. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves these tools, so the agent can use them without asking each time:

  • Bash
  • Write

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are bash and json).

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

  • dataforseo.com

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names these keys or tokens, usually read from environment variables:

  • DATAFORSEO_PASSWORD

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Backlink Audit via DataForSEO loads about 1k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 67 tokens; SKILL.md has 373 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~67

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~1k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

• NoteMentions a .env fileSKILL.md:29

  2. Write them to `~/.claude/skills/seo/.env`:

• NoteMentions a .env fileSKILL.md:34

  3. `chmod 600 ~/.claude/skills/seo/.env`

• NotePre-approves every shell command (allowed-tools: Bash)SKILL.md

  allowed-tools: Bash, Write

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from zubair-trabzada/dataforseo-claude at commit 67ac4f0, republished under its MIT licence (© zubair-trabzada). 373 words, ~1,018 tokens.

name

seo-backlinks

description

Backlink profile audit via the DataForSEO Backlinks API. Returns total backlinks, referring domains, dofollow ratio, top anchors with over-optimization flags, top referring domains by authority, and a toxicity assessment with an Authority Score (0-100).

allowed-tools

Bash, Write

~/.claude/skills/seo/scripts/preflight.sh

login: their_email@example.com
password: their_api_password_here

~/.claude/skills/seo/scripts/backlinks.py summary --target <domain>
~/.claude/skills/seo/scripts/backlinks.py refdomains --target <domain> --limit 100
~/.claude/skills/seo/scripts/backlinks.py anchors --target <domain> --limit 50

{
  "authority_score": 68,
  "backlink_summary": {
    "backlinks": 12345, "referring_domains": 432,
    "dofollow_pct": 67, "broken_backlinks": 12,
    "new_30d": 18, "lost_30d": 5
  },
  "top_referrers": [{"domain": "...", "rank": 612, "backlinks": 24, "dofollow": true}],
  "anchor_distribution": {
    "branded": 0.51, "exact_match": 0.08, "partial_match": 0.18,
    "naked_url": 0.12, "generic": 0.11
  },
  "toxicity_flags": ["..."]
}

© zubair-trabzada, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/seo-backlinks of zubair-trabzada/dataforseo-claude.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 67ac4f0