International SEO And Duplicate Content Within The Same Language

[Tom3_15]

Hello,

Currently, we have a .com English website serving an international clientele. As is the case we do not currently target any countries in Google Search Console. However, the UK is an important market for us and we are seeing very low traffic (almost entirely US). We would like to increase visibility in the UK, but currently for English speakers only. My question is this - would geo-targeting a subfolder have a positive impact on visibility/rankings or would it create a duplicate content issue if both pieces of content are in English? My plan was:

1. Create a geo-targeted subfolder (website.com/uk/) that copies our website (we currently cannot create new unique content)

2. Go into GSC and geo-target the folder to the UK

3. Add the following  to the /uk/ page to try to negate duplicate issues. Additionally, I can add a rel=canonical tag if suggested, I just worry as an already international site this will create competition between pages

However, as we are currently only targeting a location and not the language at this very specific point, would adding a ccTLD be advised instead? The threat of duplicate content worries me less here as this is a topic Matt Cutts has addressed and said is not an issue.

I prefer the subfolder method as to ccTLD's, because it allows for more scalability, as in the future I would like to target other countries and languages.

Ultimately right now, the goal is to increase UK traffic. Outside of UK backlinks, would any of the above URL geo-targeting help drive traffic?

Thanks