I understand what canonicalization does, however I'm a bit confused on one point.
Generally, of course it's used to determine the main article out of two which are identical.
But what happens to the keywords if the content isn't quite identical?
Example:-
Let's say the 'first page' it is optimised for 'racing cycles'.
The 'second page' is optimised for 'second-hand racing cycles'
Let's assume that the 'first page' doesn't have any reference to 'used' or 'second-hand' so it would be essentially unrelated to the 'second page'.
If I then add an canonical tag to the 'second page' that points to the 'first page' in theory, the 'second page' will drop from the search rankings and pass any link authority back to the 'first page'
What I want to know is will the 'first page', then rank for the keywords that the second page used to rank for? (in this case 'second-hand racing cycles')