Links from any country?

[Jingo01]

My site is aimed primarily at the UK, 90% of the traffic is from the UK and most of my links are from other UK based and UK targetted websites. The content is actually fairly international (apart from certain terms like Plasterboard instead of Drywall, etc).

My question is: Should I concentrate on gathering links from the UK, or should I widen my search and try to get links from US and European websites? Are there any particular advantages or disadvantages to keeping links "local"?

[RyanPurkey]

If you're a local business with a physical shop hoping to receive walk in visits there is certainly an advantage to getting local links, but with your bent it sounds like links from international sites would serve you well.  With all things being equal, the site with a broader diversity of global links is going to out rank the site with links from one country, save perhaps for some very localized results, from that specific country.  Short answer: it's certainly not going to hurt if you get them.

[Jingo01]

Thanks for your answer Ryan. I agree that 100 links from sites around the world is going to be better than 50 links just from the UK. But do the search engines give added weight to links from sites on the same TLD? Is my time better spent chasing those UK links?

[RyanPurkey]

If you're already at 90% UK traffic I'd look into diversifying and go after easy fits like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa. Is the site on a UK domain with UK hosting? If so, that will be more of a location signal than links and the major factor in UK boost. Stronger links--from anywhere--will apply to the strength of your site globally, plus the UK. I'd start going after those.