SERPS outside the UK

While my site does well in SERPs in the UK, it doesn’t do well in other countries, e.g the US.

For some competitive search terms I’m on page 1 on http://www.google.co.uk/ but for the same terms in the US I’m below #500. I can also see that my competitor’s .co.uk sites are in the same position. In fact one site, which always ranks #1 for my main search terms comes in a few places lower than me in the US.

So the question is, what can I do to improve my search results? From the research I’ve done so far on the internet and by asking around, it’s been recommended I do 2 things:

1. Host my sites on a US-based server with a .com domain name.
2. Build US-based backlinks to my site.

I’m not sure I understand the first point. If I post a duplicate of my site on a US-based server won’t this be seen as duplicate content? Doesn’t Google penalise for duplicate content?

On the second point, what’s a US-based backlink? Does this mean I need backlinks from .com sites hosted on US-based servers. I can be polite when asking for a backlink but this seems like a tall order.

Need to think this one through ….