Being able to accurately measure the loading speed of your website is important vital if you are to improve your websites performance. Moxilla Firefox uses a free plug in called Yslow which will automatically give you the page size in k as well as the load time in seconds.
It is important to remember that this time will vary depending on your internet connection, the time of day etc, so the best way to test is to compare your site with your competitors sites at a given time. If you consistently lag behind your direct competitors, you will need to start to look for ways to speed up your site by cleaning up the code, reducing your page content, or removing active content.
There are several things that can be done to enhance your sites speed without compromising your content too much.......
Find out more here.....Improve your Page Load Speed
Remember: Each server request that your page makes will slow your loading time. Aim to reduce your page code as much as possible and to simplify it wherever possible.
Good SEO starts with well built pages, built using efficient coding practices.