Six to Twelve Months Is Not a Plan
When somebody tells you results take six to twelve months, ask what will be different in week one.
Local Search
Ask what a marketing package does for you and there is a good chance you hear a number between six and twelve months. Sometimes it arrives with a note that campaigns do not get real traction until at least six months in. It sounds like patience and expertise. Often it is a long runway before anybody can be held to anything.
What the runway is for
Getting found in search genuinely does take time. That part is true, and anybody promising otherwise is lying to you. But the same timeline gets stretched over a lot of work that takes no time at all, and six months is also comfortably past the point where you would have caught it early.
Owners describe the pattern in the same words every time. Always next month. Always one more optimization away.
Two different problems
Being invisible and being ignored are separate problems. Invisible means people searching your trade never see you, and yes, fixing that is slow. Ignored means they already land on you and leave anyway, and fixing that is fast.
Plenty of contractors have the second problem and get sold the cure for the first. Your site might already put a couple hundred people in front of you every month. If none of them called, more of them will not help.
What can be true in week one
A number that taps. A form that lands somewhere you check. A page that loads before people quit on it. A first line that says what you do and where you do it. None of that needs six months. It needs a few days, and it is checkable the day it is done.
The question to ask
Whatever anybody proposes, ask what will be different in week one and how you will be able to tell. If the honest answer is nothing measurable for half a year, that might still be worth buying. You should just know that is what you are buying.
Slow work is fine when you can see it. Six months of nothing is not a plan.