Affliate banner links slows loading of site

Specify explicit width’s and height’s on everything that you can, especially images/iframes/anything coming from other sites. Stick them in DIV’s and use style’s to specify the size of those if you have to. This allows those areas to be spaced out early (without waiting for them to load) and thus the rest of the page can display, while the browser continues to load that image or what have you.

Also, make sure your page is valid. Valid code renders quicker. If the browser has to switch into quirks mode, it will take longer to display.