The majority of them are considered eyesores, others fade into the sidebar and are hardly ever clicked upon. At some point, somebody thought these were an effective way to navigate a blog.

I can understand and somewhat appreciate how the larger words in the cloud represent popular topics or content, but there are plenty of other ways to highlight such content in a much more efficient manner.

1} Don’t be afraid of categories. If you look at your content and see that it can branch out further than General, News, and Articles, go wild. Obviously, if you’ve interviewed someone that post would be best in an Interview category, but it could still be added to other categories as well, depending on the topics discussed, the interviewee’s background, etc…

2} List the most recent articles. Even though most blog templates tend to display the last several full or partial posts, having a simple list of those post’s titles can make it easier to find the latest articles. Fuzzy Recent Posts Plugin is a good place to start.

3} Rank the popular posts. Insightful articles only hit you every now and then. When they do, they usually draw the most traffic and comments. Displaying a list of those posts based upon their activity is a great way to gain more pageviews from new visitors. MostWanted can list these posts in your sidebar.

4} Display recent comments. This is an easy way for readers to monitor discussions and encourage them to join in. Another Fuzzy plugin should do the trick.

5} Recommend articles yourself. If there are a few posts you’d like to get more traffic to or think are great reads, highlight them at the top of the page or sidebar in a unique way. Matt has done so himself over at the top of Net Business Blog.

6} Stylize your archive. Your archive doesn’t have to just be a list of the months of your posts. Displaying the titles for each month like 37signals or Matt Brett makes finding content much easier. Clean Archives makes this easy.

7} Suggest related posts. You don’t have to manually do this yourself; there are plugins available which add a list of related articles to the bottom of every post. Simple Tagging is one of the best plugins for this.

8} Use a rating system. Enabling your readers to rate your posts can be a good way to encourage interaction and gain feedback. Some systems also allow you to display a list of the best rated articles on your site. Here is the Star Rating plugin.

Tags are still an integral part of a blog and essential in gaining rank in search engines and on Technorati. They’re just better off at the bottom of a post than a cluttering cloud.

Techquila Shots touched on this as well.