Why do some people only want .uk links? Clearly traffic won't be only .uk traffic so what is the deal?
Most .co.uk sites target the UK, and are hosted in the UK too. If you'd want to rank better in the UK search results, buying UK links should be a part of their strategy.
From a ranking perspective. If I have a link from a site hosted in UK then surely it will helps with rankings in .co.uk
If someone would like to get targeted traffic from the uk then it will make sense for them to get backlinks from .uk sites.
geo targeting. site with co.uk domains usually target UK visitors and will get ranked better within google.co.uk if the site is hosted within UK and have backlinks from uk sites
Apart from the SEO implications, having a region specific domain can be beneficial if your product / service is region specific as well. That is to say, having a url extension such as .co.uk reinforces a local message / perception of a website. (An example - Online Store - people usually prefer to buy things that they can return / ship to easily from their location. The closer the better).
well its very simple and clear if you want to get good ranking in specific geographical area i.e uk then you can get backlinks from the websites which are hosted and having domain co.uk.
that is because search results shown are based on your IP address (in your case US). you would be shown more of US sites.
I agree that hosting is also a good factor to rank high in search results for a particular country though I think that even your site is US based, you can also achieve higher ranking in UK search results depending on how well-versed you are in building links. If you focus on getting quality backlinks from sites that have .co.uk domain or are UK Based, you can still rank high in uk serp.
Not all, yes some.. Especially on my far place away from UK.. Mostly .uk site are hosted in the UK webhosting. And they are surely and get some links on the uk sites. Links from different IP address has a good improvement to get rank in your site from the search engines.
I use a .co.uk for my global business, just because it's how I started out many years ago and it's built up some milage. I don't find it makes that much difference, in fact my website is ranked #2 out of 3.2 million results for my target keyphrase.. even without any of the keywords in the domain! I have been thinking about moving to a .com, but that would mean starting domain ranking from scratch and coming up with a new and available name.
I guess its for mainly for two reason; 1. The site owners from the UK and thus would want his users to associate him to the country. OR 2. As some of my friends have already mentioned, to target an audience of a certain geographical area.
When you campaign SEO in UK area...that would be great..... But i never doubt that you can gain authority links in UK.