Here’s the situation: you’ve got a UK-based site, and you want to rank in the US. Or you’re sitting in Brooklyn trying to crack the British market. Either way, you’ve heard the same advice a hundred times — “links from .com sites work in the UK too, just go after high DR” — and it’s not entirely wrong, but it’s not exactly the whole story either.

Cross-border link building between the UK and US looks easier than it is. The two markets share a language (mostly), business norms (kind of), and pop culture references (debatably). But under the surface, the SEO mechanics, the journalist culture, the search behaviour, and the link economics are different in ways that catch most marketers off guard the first time they try.

This article is the playbook I wish I’d had the first time I ran a UK-to-US campaign. We’ll cover what actually works, what looks like it works but doesn’t, and the specific tactics that punch above their weight when you’re building links from one English-speaking market into the other.

Before we dive in: if you’re newer to link building generally, start with our guide to what link building is and the 15 link building strategies that form the backbone of most modern campaigns. The cross-border tactics below assume you already know the basics.

What you’ll learn in this guide

The 4 things that actually change when you cross the Atlantic (spoiler: not what you think)
Why .com vs .co.uk doesn’t matter as much as everyone says — and what does
Tactics that travel well from UK to US
Tactics that travel well from US to UK
How to find and reach US journalists from a UK list (and vice versa)
The tone shift: how to localise your pitch without sounding fake
Cross-border PR moments and the angle game
What to measure, and on what timeline

1. The 4 things that actually change when you cross the Atlantic

Let me cut through the noise. Here’s what actually changes when you do cross-border link building between the UK and US — and what stays the same.

Change #1: The link economics flip

In the UK, a digital PR placement on a tier-1 outlet — BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Daily Mail Online — is gold. There aren’t that many of them, and getting one is a campaign milestone. In the US, the equivalent tier (NYT, Washington Post, CNN, Forbes) is bigger but more saturated. There’s more supply on both sides: more outlets and far more pitches.

What this means practically: a UK campaign that lands 3-5 tier-1 placements is a strong campaign. A US campaign that lands 3-5 tier-1 placements is also strong — but the average US campaign needs more pitches per placement than the equivalent UK one. The hit rate is lower because the inbox volume of an average US journalist is higher.

Pro tip If you’re moving from UK to US outreach for the first time, expect your response rate to drop by 30-50% on identical pitches. It’s not your pitch — it’s the volume their inboxes are dealing with. Adjust outreach volume up before you adjust your pitch.

Change #2: The geographic relevance signal

Google has gotten really good at understanding which audience a site is built for, and which audience a link is coming from. A UK site with mostly UK backlinks ranks well in the UK. The same site, after acquiring 50 US backlinks, doesn’t suddenly become “a US site” in Google’s eyes — but it does start to look more relevant for US queries that don’t have an obvious local intent.

The catch: most queries with commercial intent do have local intent. Searching for “best CRM software” from New York doesn’t return the same SERP as searching from Manchester. Cross-border links nudge the dial, but they don’t override geographic targeting signals like hreflang, server location, currency on-page, and address schema.

Change #3: The pitch register changes

This is the one most UK marketers underestimate. American journalists expect a different register from British journalists. Specifically:

More direct subject lines (US journalists skim aggressively)
Less hedging in the pitch body (“we believe this might possibly be of interest” reads as low-confidence)
More numbers, less narrative in the opening (US data journalists especially)
Faster get-to-the-point structure (the British style of building context first lands worse)

And the reverse is also true. American marketers pitching UK journalists with the standard US punchy-direct style come across as pushy. UK journalists prefer a touch more context, slightly more deference, and a willingness to chat that US journalists frequently don’t have time for.

Change #4: The publisher hierarchy is shaped differently

In the UK, the press hierarchy is reasonably stable: a handful of national papers at the top, a tier of trade press below, then specialist blogs and digital natives. In the US, the hierarchy is much more fragmented because of the size of the country — local newspapers (Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, etc.) hold real domain authority and cover regional angles that don’t exist as a category in the UK.

This actually creates an opportunity: US regional press is significantly underused by UK marketers doing US outreach. We’ll come back to this in section 4.

2. Why .com vs .co.uk doesn’t matter (much) — and what does

Every few months, someone publishes a panicked LinkedIn post claiming you must have a .com domain to rank in the US, or must have a .co.uk to rank in the UK. It’s not really true. Or rather, it’s true in such a narrow way that it doesn’t matter for most decisions.

What Google actually uses to determine geographic targeting

In rough order of weight:

Hreflang annotations and the URL structure they reference
The geographic distribution of inbound links
On-page signals: currency, address, phone number format, language variants
Search Console country targeting (when set, and when applicable to the TLD)
Server location (very weak signal in 2026, but still measurable)
Country-coded TLD (.co.uk, .de, .fr) — strong if you have it; not a dealbreaker if you don’t

Notice that the TLD is at the bottom. A .com site with strong hreflang implementation, a UK office address in the footer, GBP pricing on commercial pages, and 70% of its referring domains coming from UK publishers will rank in the UK without much friction. Conversely, a .co.uk site with a US-heavy backlink profile and dollar pricing will start losing ground in UK SERPs over time.

The practical implication for cross-border campaigns

If you have a single global site (most common in B2B SaaS, content publishers, and DTC ecommerce), your cross-border link building is mostly about balance: don’t let your link profile drift so heavily into one geography that Google misreads who you’re for.

If you have separate country sites (.com and .co.uk, for example), your cross-border link building is mostly about targeting: which page on which domain do you want this link to point at?

Quick rule of thumb If your business genuinely serves both markets, aim for inbound link geography that roughly mirrors your revenue split. If you do 70% UK / 30% US revenue, having a backlink profile that’s 80%+ UK is fine. Having one that’s 99% UK suggests you’re under-investing in US discovery.

3. UK to US: tactics that actually travel

Let’s get specific. Here are the tactics that consistently work when you’re a UK site trying to acquire US backlinks.

Tactic 1: Reactive PR via HARO replacements and US journalist platforms

HARO is gone (RIP), but the ecosystem of journalist-source matching tools that replaced it — Connectively (during its run), Qwoted, Featured, Help A B2B Writer, Source of Sources by Roxhill — is bigger than ever. Most of these have stronger US journalist density than UK. If you’re a UK expert with a credible angle on a topic US journalists are writing about, reactive PR is one of the fastest ways to get into US press.

The trick is being available on US time. A US journalist with a 4 PM Eastern deadline isn’t going to wait for a UK reply that comes in at 9 AM their time the next morning. If you’re serious about US reactive PR, set up alerts on the US workday and respond within 2-4 hours, not next-day.

Tactic 2: Original UK-vs-US comparison data

This is the highest-leverage UK-to-US tactic that exists. US publications love stories that contain a transatlantic comparison angle: “Brits drink 2.3x more tea per capita than Americans,” “UK SaaS pricing is 18% lower than US equivalents,” “American Gen Z spends 40% more on coffee than British Gen Z.” The comparison automatically gives the story a hook for both markets.

If you have any proprietary dataset — sales data, survey data, search trends, app usage patterns — you can almost certainly extract a UK vs US split that becomes the story angle for a US digital PR campaign. This is one of the few tactics where the comparison angle is more valuable than the underlying data.

Real example A UK personal finance brand published a study comparing how UK and US 25-year-olds save for retirement. The data itself was straightforward — survey of 2,000 respondents, 1,000 each side. But framing it as a UK-vs-US story got the same dataset placed in 14 US outlets including two top-tier business publications, plus 22 UK outlets. The same dataset framed UK-only would have been a UK-only campaign.

Tactic 3: US local press for UK businesses with US footprints

If your UK business has any kind of US presence — an office, a customer base in a specific city, a partnership with a US firm — local US press is enormously underused. A UK fintech that signs a partnership with a Chicago-based bank can pitch the Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business, and a dozen Chicago tech blogs that would be uncompetitive against US-native fintech competitors going for the same coverage.

US local journalists love the British angle. “London-based startup expands to Chicago” is a story shape that gets local coverage in a way that domestic expansions don’t. Use it.

Tactic 4: Industry expert positioning at US conferences

Speaking at a US conference earns links from the conference site, the conference’s media partners, recap blogs, and the speaker’s own LinkedIn syndication network. The links compound over years — a SaaStr or HubSpot Inbound speaker slot can be worth more in cumulative SEO value than a six-figure earned PR campaign.

UK speakers are often preferred for US conferences because they offer a different perspective without requiring the conference to fly in someone from outside the speakers’ usual networks. The transatlantic angle is itself a programming hook for conference organisers.

Tactic 5: Co-branded content with a US partner

Find a US business that serves an adjacent audience to yours, propose a co-authored research report or industry survey, and split the promotion. Their US distribution carries your brand into US press; you reciprocate with UK distribution carrying theirs into UK press. Both sides win. Both sides get backlinks neither could have earned alone.

4. US to UK: tactics that actually travel

Going the other direction. Here’s what works when you’re a US site trying to build links into UK SERPs.

Tactic 1: UK regional press

UK regional press — Manchester Evening News, Birmingham Mail, Yorkshire Post, Liverpool Echo, Glasgow Herald — is high domain authority, easier to pitch than national press, and largely ignored by US marketers because they don’t know it exists. If you have any UK angle (a customer story, a regional partnership, UK-relevant data), regional press will frequently take it.

Tactic 2: UK trade press

Every UK industry has its trade press, and UK trade titles are notably easier to access than US trade titles in the same sector. Marketing Week, The Drum, B2B Marketing, HR Magazine, People Management, Construction News, Building Magazine — and dozens more — publish weekly, have small editorial teams, and welcome quality contributed articles in a way that their US equivalents (which are usually bigger and more pitched-to) often don’t.

Underused angle US brands often forget that UK trade press exists. A US B2B SaaS pitching to Marketing Week with UK-specific data on the topic Marketing Week covers will frequently land coverage that the equivalent US trade press would never give them. The lift comes from being a less crowded inbox, not from being a better pitch.

Tactic 3: UK university and research collaborations

UK universities — .ac.uk domains — are notoriously hard to get links from, but US brands actually have an unexpected advantage here. UK academics looking for industry partnerships often want a US company specifically, because the US-collaboration angle is itself useful for the academic’s own profile and grant applications. A US brand that proposes a credible research collaboration with a UK university is offering something a UK competitor often can’t.

Tactic 4: UK-specific content for an existing US asset

If you have a flagship piece of content already published — an annual report, an industry benchmark, a major how-to guide — producing a UK-localised version is one of the most efficient link earning plays available. The asset already exists. The UK localisation is mostly about: UK-specific data anchoring, GBP figures, UK case studies, UK examples, and UK spelling. The result is a UK-focused page that earns UK links.

Tactic 5: Reactive UK PR via journalist platforms

UK reactive PR platforms — ResponseSource, Ampient, JournoLink — are smaller than the US ecosystem but the journalist density per pitch is much higher. A US brand with a useful UK-relevant angle can land UK press hits in days.

The discipline that matters most here: UK journalists want UK-specific data or UK examples, not American data dropped into a UK pitch. “Our research shows that UK Gen Z spends £X per month” works. “Our research shows that Gen Z in the US spends $Y per month, and we think this is interesting for British readers” doesn’t.

5. UK vs US outreach: the side-by-side

Here’s a quick reference for the differences in outreach style, pace, and norms between the two markets:

Dimension	UK norm	US norm
Email length	Medium (150-250 words)	Short (80-150 words)
Subject line style	Descriptive, slightly formal	Direct, value-first
Tone register	Slightly hedged, polite	Direct, confident
Follow-up cadence	1-2 follow-ups, 4-7 days apart	1-2 follow-ups, 2-4 days apart
Response time expected	1-3 business days	Same day to 2 days
Phone outreach	Generally unwelcome	Acceptable for known contacts
LinkedIn outreach	Useful but secondary	Heavily used
Best contact times	Tue-Thu, 9-11 AM GMT	Tue-Thu, 10 AM-12 PM ET
Worst contact times	Friday afternoon, August	Friday afternoon, late Dec, summer Fridays
Tier-1 placement difficulty	Hard but achievable	Harder, more pitches needed

6. Finding journalists in the other market

Cross-border outreach lives or dies on the quality of your contact list. Throwing UK pitches at US journalists you don’t actually know cover your topic is the fastest way to torch your sender reputation. Here’s how to build a clean cross-border journalist list.

The 3-step list-building process

Step 1: Find the right beats. Don’t search for “US journalists.” Search for journalists who cover your specific topic in the geography you’re targeting. Use tools like Muck Rack, Roxhill, Cision, or Prowly to filter by beat (e.g., “fintech reporters at US business publications”) rather than by geography alone.

Step 2: Verify recent activity. A journalist who covered your topic 18 months ago might have moved beats, left the publication, or shifted focus. Always check recent bylines (last 90 days) before adding a contact to your outreach list. Our guide to finding journalist email addresses walks through verification workflows in detail.

Step 3: Localise your enrichment. For each contact, note their typical pitch preferences (Twitter/X, LinkedIn, email), their working hours in their local timezone, and any pitch guidelines they’ve publicly published. This is the difference between a list that works and a list that just exists.

Tools that work for cross-border list building in 2026

Most of the major journalist-database platforms have decent coverage of both UK and US markets, but the depth varies. From experience, the platforms with the strongest UK-US cross-coverage are Muck Rack (best US depth, decent UK), Roxhill (best UK depth, decent US), and Prowly (good both, weaker on long-tail trade press). For specific tactical recommendations on tooling, see our link building tools overview.

7. Localising the pitch (without sounding fake)

This is where most cross-border outreach goes wrong. Marketers either pitch in their native style and hope for the best, or they over-correct and produce pitches that read as if a UK person is performing American-ness (or vice versa). Both lose. The goal is genuine local relevance, not performed local style.

UK pitching to US: 5 specific shifts

Spell American: “organize” not “organise,” “-er” not “-re,” “check” not “cheque.” If your pitch has the word “colour” in it, you’ve already lost a US recipient.
Use US measurements where applicable. “30 miles” not “50 km,” “$” not “£,” “Fahrenheit” not “Celsius.”
Cut the hedging. Replace “we thought this might be of interest” with “this is why this matters for your readers.” Replace “perhaps you’d like to consider” with “happy to send the data over.”
Use US date format. “April 16, 2026” not “16th April 2026.”
Include a US time reference for any deadline you mention. “Available before 5 PM ET” lands; “available before 5 PM” with no timezone makes you look careless.

US pitching to UK: 5 specific shifts

Spell British: “organise,” “colour,” “behaviour,” “realised.” Mixed spelling within a single pitch is worse than picking the wrong variant consistently.
Use metric measurements and £. “50 km,” “£20,” “24°C.”
Add slightly more context before the ask. UK journalists prefer 1-2 sentences setting up the relevance before the data point. The US-style “here are the numbers, here’s the angle, are you in?” reads as transactional in the UK.
Use UK date format. “16 April 2026” not “April 16, 2026.”
Reference UK angle explicitly. UK editors want to know upfront why this matters for British readers — not just what the data says, but why a UK audience cares.

The rule of thumb Don’t try to sound like a local. Try to be genuinely useful to a local. Most UK and US journalists know within 5 seconds of opening an email whether the sender is local or foreign — and they don’t care, as long as the pitch respects their reader and their working norms. Performed localisation reads as awkward; respectful localisation reads as professional.

8. Cross-border PR moments and the angle game

Some news moments only work because of the cross-border angle. Knowing how to spot and play these is one of the most underrated cross-border PR skills. Here are the angles that consistently produce coverage on both sides:

The transatlantic comparison

The default winning angle. Anything that compares UK and US data on the same metric. Spending habits, working hours, dating behaviour, fitness routines, technology adoption, salary benchmarks — the comparison is the story. This is the highest-yield cross-border digital PR play in existence, and it works year after year because it gives both UK and US journalists a self-relevant angle.

The American-in-UK or Brit-in-US story

Personal stories about someone from one country navigating the other are perennial press magnets. “Why this American moved to London and never left,” “Why this Brit started a company in San Francisco,” “What surprised this New Yorker about UK pubs.” If you have founders, customers, or employees with credible cross-border stories, these can fuel ongoing PR for years.

The cultural moment hook

Sports events (Wimbledon, Super Bowl, Premier League season, NBA finals), royal events, US elections, UK budget announcements, Eurovision, the Oscars — these are predictable cross-border attention windows. Brands that prepare angles 4-6 weeks ahead of these moments and pitch into the news cycle as it builds outperform brands that react after the moment hits.

The economic divergence story

UK and US economic data routinely diverge — inflation rates, interest rate decisions, unemployment trends, currency movements. Industry analysis that connects these macro trends to your specific sector creates ongoing pitch material. Both UK and US business journalists actively look for expert commentary that explains what divergence means for their respective audiences.

9. Measurement: what to track, and on what timeline

Cross-border campaign measurement has a couple of quirks that domestic measurement doesn’t. Here’s how to set up a measurement framework that actually tells you whether your transatlantic effort is working.

The 3 measurement layers for cross-border campaigns

Layer 1 — Acquisition (weekly): link volume, referring domain count, geography of acquired links, and average DR per market. This tells you whether the outreach motor is producing.
Layer 2 — Search visibility (monthly): country-segmented organic traffic and ranking movement. Use Search Console’s country filter and a rank tracker that supports country-level tracking. UK and US data should be tracked separately, never aggregated.
Layer 3 — Commercial impact (quarterly): market-level pipeline contribution, weighted by AOV. US AOVs in many B2B SaaS verticals run 20-40% higher than UK equivalents — flat traffic comparisons hide this.

The measurement timeline that’s realistic for cross-border SEO

Here’s the honest timeline most agencies don’t tell you about. From the moment you start a serious cross-border link building program:

Month 1-2: link acquisition starts; no ranking impact visible yet
Month 3-4: first measurable ranking movement on long-tail and mid-tail queries
Month 5-6: measurable improvement on high-intent commercial queries (in the country with weaker existing authority)
Month 7-9: traffic ramp becomes meaningful; pipeline impact starts becoming attributable
Month 10-12: full ROI measurable; budget renewal decisions can be made on real data

Anyone promising you US ranking movement from UK link building inside 90 days is selling. Cross-border SEO is a 9-12 month commitment minimum, and a 24-month commitment for compounding results.

10. Common mistakes (and how to avoid them)

Mistake 1: Treating .com and .co.uk as identical brands. If you have separate country sites, they need separate content strategies, not just translated currency. Same content on both domains creates duplicate content issues and dilutes both sides.

Mistake 2: Outreaching at the wrong local time. Sending a UK-time pitch to a US journalist at 9 AM London time means it lands at 4 AM ET, gets buried under the day’s email volume, and is gone by the time the journalist looks at their inbox. Schedule sends in the recipient’s timezone, always.

Mistake 3: Pitching the same data both ways unchanged. UK-anchored data needs reframing for US audiences (and vice versa). “UK shoppers spend £45/month on streaming” needs to become “American consumers spend $X — and a side-by-side with the UK reveals Y” to land in US press.

Mistake 4: Ignoring local PR seasonality. US press is dead between Christmas and New Year and slows on summer Fridays. UK press is dead in late August and the week between Christmas and New Year. Cross-border campaign timelines should respect both seasonalities.

Mistake 5: Buying into the country-targeting myth. Some marketers obsess over hreflang while ignoring that they have 5 backlinks from the country they want to rank in. Hreflang is necessary but not sufficient. Geographic link distribution does more for cross-border visibility than any technical tag ever will.

Mistake 6: Not warming the inbox. Outreach for cross-border campaigns is high-volume by definition. If you’re sending 200+ pitches per month from a domain that previously sent 20, your sender reputation will tank within weeks. Warm up dedicated outreach domains and follow proper email infrastructure practices, especially when starting a new market push. Our walkthrough of email outreach for link building covers the infrastructure side in detail.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a separate domain for the US market if I’m UK-based?

Generally no. Most UK businesses serving the US do well with subfolders (site.co.uk/us/) or with a single .com that uses hreflang to differentiate UK and US versions. Separate country domains are only worth the operational overhead if you’re running a serious dual-market business — typically £10M+ revenue with meaningful US share, or where regulatory differences between UK and US make a single site impractical (e.g., financial services).

Can US backlinks hurt my UK rankings?

Not directly. A high-quality US backlink is a high-quality backlink. The risk isn’t that US links hurt UK rankings — it’s that an overwhelmingly US backlink profile can confuse Google about which audience you’re for. If you’re a UK business and 95%+ of your inbound links are from US publishers, you may see UK ranking softness on local-intent queries. The fix is balance, not avoidance.

How long does it take to see ranking results in a new geography?

Realistically, 6-12 months for measurable improvement on commercial queries; 12-24 months for sustainable competitive positioning. Anyone promising faster is either getting lucky on long-tail keywords or telling you what you want to hear. Cross-border SEO compounds slowly and rewards patience disproportionately.

Should I hire local agencies for US and UK outreach, or run it from one office?

Depends on volume. Below ~50 placements per year per market, a single team with cross-trained specialists works fine. Above that, local agencies (or local in-house hires) start to matter — primarily for relationships, journalist access, and event presence. The break-even point is usually around the £100k/year mark for a dedicated cross-border channel.

Are link prices different between US and UK markets?

Yes, meaningfully. US digital PR placements typically cost 20-40% more than UK equivalents at comparable DR, primarily because of higher inbox volume and more competitive pitching. US guest post placements (where they happen — they’re a smaller share of the link economy than they used to be) also tend to be more expensive. Budget accordingly: a £30k UK campaign might need £40k of US-equivalent budget for similar volume.

Should I prioritise UK or US first if I’m starting from scratch?

Prioritise where your revenue is. If you don’t yet have meaningful revenue in either, prioritise the smaller market — UK is typically faster to gain traction in than US for an unknown brand because of lower competition for attention. Build authority in your home market first, then use that authority as a credibility lever when you cross the Atlantic.

Wrapping up

Cross-border link building between the UK and US looks deceptively similar to domestic link building, but the dynamics are different enough that treating it as a translation exercise produces poor results. The marketers who win at this aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets — they’re the ones who respect the local norms of the market they’re entering, build genuine local relationships, and accept that the timeline runs in months and quarters, not weeks.

If you take one thing from this article, take this: the transatlantic comparison angle is the single most underused link earning play available to dual-market businesses. Most UK and US brands are sitting on data that, when reframed as a UK-vs-US story, would land in 20+ outlets they couldn’t otherwise access. Find your version of that angle and run it.

And then: keep going. Cross-border SEO rewards consistency more than cleverness. The brands that show up every month for two years end up with cross-border authority their three-month-campaign competitors will never catch.