when your looking for a keyword and you have found it. When you do link checks, and find that an artical is ranking higher then some of the other sites that have more links, would that be a good target to try to beat out in 6 months?
you cannot really be specific in date when you can rank higher than the competitor. There are many factors in getting high ranks. If there aren't many competitors, yes, I think 6 months is possible.
Everything changes daily... You just gotta keep upgrading and split testing with those to keep up with high ranks. But yeah depending on the competition and popularity.. 6 months might works.
There is no guaranteed that you can out rank them. Just keep building links and wait for months to see the results.