One of the questions I see again and again in SEO discussions on Reddit is simple: how long does it take before a site actually starts ranking?
The honest answer is that there is no fixed timeline.
I have worked with SEO since 2008, both on my own websites and for clients, and I have seen new pages get impressions within days while other sites take months before they gain meaningful visibility.
A lot depends on what you mean by βrankβ.
Getting indexed by Google is not the same as ranking on page one. And ranking for a very specific long-tail keyword is very different from competing for a broad commercial SEO term.
From my experience, a new site should focus first on search terms it can realistically rank for. Getting initial impressions and clicks gives you real data in Google Search Console and helps you understand how Google sees your pages.
This is also why I do not believe every new SEO page needs 1,500 or 2,000 words from day one.
Sometimes it makes more sense to publish a focused page, see which searches it appears for, and then improve the page based on real search data.