Remember to perform the website speed test after you have build your website. There are many online tool out there. Example, you can use https://tools.pingdom.com and https://gtmetrix.com/
I just tested my website, http://www.learntodesignwebsite.com/index.html and I am quite happy with the result shown 
From this tool, I can evaluate what area my website needs to improve for better performance. These two websites are free and do not need to register or download anything to use it.
1. GTMetrix
2. Pingdom tool
3. Load Impact – For Stress Test – Cool!
Sometimes, we might not realize that our website has some broken links. This could be due to you remove some finds which you thought no longer valid in your website. To find all your web pages manually can be a time consuming especially if you have hundreds of pages in your website.
To do so, there is a online tool you can use and it is free – http://validator.w3.org/checklink/
Just type your domain at the text box and click “Check” button. If your site got broken links, it will show in the result like below:
“The homepage is the most important page on most websites, and gets more page views than any other page” – Jakob Nielsen
There are many useful tips to improve your home page (home page is means your first page in your website). For that you can check on http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020512.html
Here, I would like to focus on just one point, page loading time. Since home page is the first page people normally visit, it is important to make sure your home page load fast. You know, first impression.
One of the main area which affects the page loading time is your page size. Page size does not just include the size of your html and images, but also your external page, like external style sheet, Javascript and etc.
The good news is you don’t need to check on your page size manually. There are online tool out there to help you. And this is what I have been using. Second good news, it is free!
After you have reached that site, just type your domain and click “Submit Query” (below is the print screen)
Then, it will show you the report of your site, with some recommendation to improve it. Ops .. my personal home page has exceeded the optimum page size a bit. (below is the print screen)
More Resources
I realized from Google Webmaster Tools that I don’t have a google sitemaps and I hope to have one.
I also learnt that there are site out there which can generate this google sitemaps. I have tried some sites but they fail to do a good job. But, just now, at last, I found a good one. It is sitemapdoc.
What is the usage of this sitemap? My knowledge at this time is, it helps search engine to crawl my website better.
So, after the site has generated the xml, I copied and paste it to my notepad and save it as .xml file. Then, I upload it to my website. Then, I went to Google Webmaster Tools to add this Google Sitemaps. It took some time (less than 30 minutes) to process the sitemaps. Right now, I got a sitemaps, hurray!
