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Chris has covered this pretty well. It shouldn't make a difference, but from a best-practice point of view, you should really try to keep everything local if you are a local business. As a business based in London, you should really have UK based hosting, or a CDN that will deliver your site to those in different countries. There can also be speed issues, but a lot of that depends on the host and their infrastructure. If a client comes to me for an audit, if I see thier hosting in a different country, this is then flagged as a possible issue. -Andy

Hi, Linkbuilding is about the most awkward part of SEO, which is why it is so easy to get it wrong, which many do. In order to create something that people are going to want to link to, you need to have linkable assets that are going to engage people. Imagine for a moment that you are contacting a blog owner who talks about home & DIY hints and tips. There is absolutley no point in just going in there with an e-mail and asking for a link - you need to engage with people - you can't just go in there unless there is a value-add for them. One thing I would suggest, is looking at the speed of your site. I ran this quickly through Google Page Speed Insights, and it is very slow. This won't help your SEO efforts. My honest suggestion is to first of all sort out your site speed and then get your local SEO in order. I would imagine that most people using you are going to be locked out and need to use their mobile to get to you? If this isn't in order, you could be wasting time and money on areas that won't help immediately. Get reviews from the likes of Trustpilot and get yourself on to sites like Trust a Trader. I hope this helps. -Andy

As a new site, your best hope is to rank for longtail keywords, something like "best locksmith in london open 24/7" or the thousands of other variations on that. Your best shot is to create one super epic, informative detailed guide on everything locksmiths in London. Something longer, more informative, and more interesting than anything your competitors are doing. Then, like the other commenters have said, continue to build strong links from quality domains.

If there are links on your site going to sites that are penalized, you generally need to remove those links on your site.