Optimize ASP.NET pages by reducing the size of the VIEWSTATE to rank
higher on search engines

One way to optimize the pages you develop with ASP.NET is to keep a
check on the view state of the page and the controls that are added
to the page. Any seasoned developer of ASP.NET will remember the
VIEWSTATE which is added to every page in a hidden field _VIEWSTATE
and contains base64 encoded data which could be any where from 800
to tens of thousands of characters long depending on your usage of
this property on your page.

There are many issues with view state in ASP.NET 1.x. It is on by
default, and unless you know to look for it and disable it when it
is not needed, it can significantly increase the amount of data
rendered by your page. This becomes particularly

painful when you use data-bound controls, all of which use view
state to save their state across post backs.

You need to ensure that you only use the VIEWSTATE property for the
page and controls where necessary so that the size of the

value for the hidden field of _VIEWSTATE is minimum. This will
ensure that your page loads fast and that the search engines can
retrieve the actual content of your page.

Some search engines only read a certain set of characters from the
top (that's why you have most SEO specialists mentioning that you
should have your keywords on the top of the page) and the bottom of
the page. If the value of the hidden field of _VIEWSTATE is long on
your page then these search engines would not be able to get to the
actual content of your page as a result it would never map the
keywords (keywords density) and you would have a low ranking on
these search engines.


How to decrease the size of the view state?

a. As mentioned before the VIEWSTATE for any page is set to TRUE by
default. If you do not require the controls or the page to hold the
VIEWSTATE you can disable the VIEWSTATE for the page completely by
adding the directive to the page. (Usually if you have a page that
does not post back to itself you can disable the VIEWSTATE on these
pages.)


b. You can selectively disable the VIEWSTATE of the controls,
datagrids etc that you use on the page if these controls do not post
back to the same page.


You will see a considerable difference in the page size and the
loading time of the page once you disable the VIEWSTATE of the
controls or the page. This will also be evident from the size of the
base64-encoded string in the value field of the hidden field of
_VIEWSTATE. By disabling the VIEWSTATE for a couple of datagrid
controls on one of the pages of our clients

website, we were able to reduce the VIEWSTATE of the page from
10,000 characters to 1000 characters and the page size also reduced
by a few kilobytes (KB).


About the Author

Manoj Mansukhani is the founder and CEO of Scarlet Technologies
(http://www.scarlettech.com). They provide services to help

business get setup and succeed online. Their services include online
marketing, search engine optimization, increasing

website conversion rates and web development. Visit the website or
contact him to find out how you can succeed online.