The lazy days of summer crawl in North America & Europe, creating a bevvy of webmasters who fret and furrow their brows, wondering where the traffic has gone. This "summer slump" is an observable phenomenon every year in industries of all types as workers in the US, Canada, Europe and much of Asia take extra-long lunch breaks, leave work early and take vacations in droves.

Several threads are ongoing on the subject, including a good one that's been featured at Sitepoint. Member KLB goes so far as to post traffic stats from the slump of June & July, though he notes that things should pick up almost immediately after the labor day holiday here in the US (early September). To contribute my own findings, see the traffic for SEOmoz, which has gotten increasingly noticed and popular over the last 3 months in the SEO/M community, yet has scarcely the traffic levels it did in April & May thanks to the sumer slump.

While I'm waiting for business to pick up again, I'm doing three things related to SEO/M:

• Testing ads - It's a great time to put your foot in the water with big traffic terms and see how your performance goes without worrying about paying too much.
• Building natural links - Bloggers, it seems, don't go on vacation and they also seem to have less to post about - a great time to take advantage of slow news days and get some good links to your site
• Updating Sites & Content - Since folks are away, they'll be less complaining if you take a site or page down for some maintenance or fixing up.

I'm also doind a lot of outdoors stuff - running around Seattle's Greenlake (3.1 miles), hiking on Whidbey Island's Deception Pass State Park and after SES San Jose, taking an overnight trip into the north cascades for some hiking on Ptarmigan Ridge in the Mt. Baker Wilderness & Mt. Rainier (pictured). It's my favorite combination - summer and snow...