@smiller76 Hey there, this is something I've plenty of experience with.
Canonical tags are helpful when there's a single page that's accessible by multiple URLs, or different pages with similar content.
In this instance, your page is ranking for 'atlanta apartments,' but is it in the first organic position? Is 'atlanta apartments' the target keyword for the page? These are improtant questions to ask, because they'll help you understand what your next steps are.
A page will rank for many different keywords, but it's unlikely to rank in the first position for every keyword.
Let's say your page ranking for 'atlanta apartments' has content relevant to apartments in Atlanta, but this isn't the main target keyword. Well there's an opportunity to create a new page with unique content targeting that keyword ('atlanta apartments'), and so long as the content is unique and doesn't include duplicate content from the other page, the canonical tag should point to the new page URL.
To summarize, if the new page is unique, the canonical tag should point to the new page URL. If it's a duplicate of the existing page (which I wouldn't recommend), the canonical tag should point to the existing page URL to avoid duplicate content penalization.
Keyword research will help you develop your content strategy and understand what keywords to target without cannabilizing current keyword rankings. Here's a helpful blog post from a colleague at our agency: SEO keyword research guide
Hope all of this is helpful and good luck with your content creation efforts!
