Recent reports seem to show that Google may be adding page loading speed to their ranking algorithm in the not too distant future. This could allow sites with fast loading speeds to gain a ranking advantage over those that load more slowly if this is added to the Google mix. Why are page loading speeds important and how can they be speeded up? Read more
Yes page loading speed is very important for all sites . Increase your page loading speed by reducing the number of DNS or domain lookups for your site and increasing the bandwidth.
Time required for loading a page isn't that important. If you were about to maximise your pages' load speed, then you'd have to remove all ads including adsense, remove analytics and preferably all external javascript. Then it would be OK. I have one website that requires about 4 seconds to load, but the script is executed in about 0.3 second. It's also in pre-compiled state, so it takes maximally 0.4 second to load any page. But... analytics, adsense, chitika and infolinks require another 3 seconds to load. I also have a website that's scripts are executed in less than 0.04 second, but loading time shown in google webmaster tools is almost 1 second. That's because of analytics I believe. So... be as fast as possible and lose all revenue streams, or accept some slowness and earn still.
With that in mind i will still answer the original question. The reason why they were considering making faster pages rank higher above others is to push people to use smalled pages with smaller content, to use faster servers/more servers to increase the quality of websites on the Internet. The answer to how you could improve your page load speed is the same Smaller/Less content and faster/more servers
Google's Webmaster Tools has a tool for checking page speed and advising you of problems/solutions. You can find it in Diagnostics/Labs/Site Performance and it offers the option to install its Page Speed Browser Add-On.