Google Geographic target questions

[funkybuddah]

Hello world :)

I have some questions about Google's Geographic target and how it could affect SERPs in a case of a 10 years old .ro domain vs a new .com/org/us domain.

Let me be more specific: I have a 10 year old .ro domain which had mostly Romanian content but from time to time, some English articles. Those articles are pretty well linked to authority neutral top-level domain sites, even wikipedia. But, of course, the majority of backlinks are Romanian ones.
Right now I've decided to completely abandon the Romanian content and write in English only.

And here comes the question: Can my above described 10 years old domain compete from a SERP/adsense point of view with a freshly registered generic TLD? Or is it wiser to leave the .ro domain in peace and proceed with a new .com domain?

p.s.: it is worthy of mentioning that in google webmaster tools the site's geotarget is already set to romania and cannot be modified to unlisted or anything else.

[tedster]

If you want traffic from other than Romania, you will have a much easier time on a generic TLD rather than the ccTLD. I'd probably leave the existing .ro domain live while I developed the new .com. It can take a few months to get things really moving along well.

[funkybuddah]

Thanks, tedster.
That's pretty much how I feel about it, too.
But having for a few months both sites live and with the same content, will it not trigger the dreaded duplicate content filters?

[Spiekerooger]

I'd hold on to the old .ro site plus develop the new com /generic tld, as stated by tedster as well.

To further elaborate:

Keep the Romanian content on your .ro site, move the english articles (using a 301 redirect) to the new .com domain plus link to the new .com from your romanian home page (like: <a href="newsite" hreflang="en-US">my english site></a)>

This way you won't have a dc problem as well as sending the links to the old english articles to the new domain.

And by keeping the .ro site, you'll still have your old links (in Romanian) plus trust for your Romanian site while building up trust for the new one as well.