At some point we will either by necessity or accident draw back from our myopic preoccupation with our own website and see the larger context. Typically this necessity will be from considerations of promotion. How does your website fit into the larger scheme of things? Good question.
A website is part of a "web" of pages. Not all pages are yours. If you try to be everything to everyone you will lose a major key into the nature of the Internet. The internet is a web of pages generated from many sources. If you want to become part of the eternal Internet you must weave yourself into the fabric of the whole. To weave yourself into the fabric of the whole your pages must be web-friendly and linkable.
Consider www.microsoft.com. Those idiots keep changing their website so that any attempt to link into anything other than the front page is fruitless. One finds themselves updating broken links about every six months. Microsoft does not want anyone to deep link -- otherwise they would not keep changing the structure. Some websites go so far as to post warnings that deep linking will be met with litigation. That's fine. Just don't expect to become part of the eternal web when you keep breaking the strands.
Two words that you may wish to study are "synergy" and "symbiosis". I don't blame a webmaster for becoming annoyed at parasites. However, don't throw a chance for mutually beneficial symbiosis out the window in an attempt to minimize parasites. In addition don't miss the lesson of synergy. It's very possible to gain energy far in excess of anything one may have dreamed by working cooperatively with others. This is the lesson of the laser.
Admittedly this mutual interpenetration of websites and the creation of synergetics of webdesign is a bit beyond where most of us happen to be at the moment. True. But it's still a good dream and not a half bad goal to set for oneself.
