Why it takes months
Google has to find your new or improved pages, re-evaluate them against everyone else's, and watch how people respond to them. New content is commonly held in a kind of probation before it settles into a position. Links, reviews and mentions accumulate slowly. And your competitors are not standing still. There is no switch to flip; SEO is closer to building a reputation than to placing an ad.
A realistic timeline
- Weeks 1 to 4: technical fixes (indexing problems, speed, broken pages, titles) and Google Business Profile set up properly. Indexing issues fixed here can produce a jump quickly, because the pages were being held back.
- Months 2 to 3: new service and location pages are indexed and start appearing for long, specific searches. Impressions in Search Console rise before clicks do.
- Months 4 to 6: positions improve on the main terms; local map rankings respond to reviews and consistency; traffic is clearly up from the start.
- Months 6 to 12: the compounding phase. Pages that rank attract links and clicks, which help them rank further. This is where the return on the work shows.
What makes it faster or slower
Faster: a site that already has history and a few links, a specific local market, pages that answer real questions, regular reviews, and someone actually publishing each month. Slower: a brand-new domain, a national or ecommerce market, thin pages, a slow site, and expecting results from a one-time 'SEO setup'. If a provider promises page one in thirty days, ask how; the honest answer is that nobody controls Google's results. How much SEO costs in Canada covers what the work costs over that period.