From my experience (SEO consultant for 6 years), ranking high can happen almost immediately. It just depends what website you're trying to rank. Google's algori

From my experience (SEO consultant for 6 years), ranking high can happen almost immediately. It just depends what website you're trying to rank. Google's algorithm values authority heavily. And one of the things that isn't very authoritative is if you have a brand new domain. So if you want to get around the whole "SEO takes time" thing, you have to acquire a domain that has been around for a long time in the space/industry you're looking to rank content in. If wikipedia posted a article tomorrow on a topic, chances are they will rank high the next day for that topic. But if a brand new domain published the same content, it would take much longer and more effort to achieve the same result due to the disparity in authority. Also there's only so much room on page 1 of Google. Not everything is going to rank high that is the nature of SEO.