Is it risky to geo target USA in GWT while I rank well for Canada?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Brad Sacks: Located in Canada, with a .com e-commerce website, and ranking in top 2 for a particular keyword (blank blank canada, with no geo targetting set up in GWT). Would like to target USA, butafraid to lose Canada ranking. Is it risky to geo target USA in GWT or the right thing to do?
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  Rohan Ayyar: If you're ranking for "_ _ canada" in google.com (US), then technically if you geotarget USA in GWT, you shouldn't lose that ranking in google.com, provided you don't change the title, content, etc.
  
  But you never know! If ranking for _ _ Canada is important, and you're afraid of losing it, try setting up a different site, subdomain or page to target USA. On the other hand, if you're confident of your content strategy (enough to rank for _ _ canada and _ _ usa) moving forward, go for it!
  
  If you geotarget USA, you'll surely lose out on searches from Canada. Have you considered that?
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  W.E. Jonk: You want to target Canada and the USA from a single site. Therefore you shouldn't use the geographic target in GWT. You only use that function if you are targeting a specific country.
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  Brad Sacks: Sorry, I may have been unclear. I want to continue to rank for _ _ Canada but want to shift my real attention/targeting to _ _ without losing my _ _ Canada rank.
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  W.E. Jonk: Are you planning to build a dedicated US site and a dedicated Canada site?
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  Brad Sacks: Yes. We have .com and .ca but have only been using .com.
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  W.E. Jonk: I see. You can verify both the .com and the .ca. The .ca will be auto-geo-targeted to Canada, for the .com you can set it to the US.
  
  To make sure that G understands that the Canadian (US) traffic has to go to the .ca (.com) site you can use rel alternate hreflang on the .com (.ca):
  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
  Make sure they are bi-directional. ;
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  Brad Sacks: Thanks for all the help. You guys are great!