Blogs that take too long to appear on screen are likely to be bypassed by impatient readers. Google also uses load times as part of its decision-making process in which blogs get the top spots in search results.
Load times are important.
Adding too many pretty bells and whistles can cost you readership and ranking - so it's important to know how long it takes for your blog to load.
Load? Show up, fully appear on the screen after you've clicked on the link, surfed to the site.
Stopwatch will let you know your load time for free. Go here, input your website or blog path name, and watch the timer. Pingdom does it, too - along with WebPagetest.
What Causes Slow Load Times?
Google has a list of possible causes. So does Yahoo. Some of this is pretty techie stuff, admittedly.