Ive started a new blog from scratch with optimized content and it's only taken 5 days to be indexed (on a 1 yr old site).  That time will shorten in the future with more posting consistency for most any site.  As for the former 700 page website, I'd guess that Google would learn to trust, say, a new website faster than it would trust a website that it had learned not to trust due to duplicate content. Im still a novice.