A stock with a high yield doesn’t mean much if the dividend is cut or eliminated, and the stock price declines significantly. Sometimes it is desirable to accept higher risk for a higher yield. Other times we may be accepting higher risk and are not being adequately compensated for the additional risk. What can we do to help gauge the risk of an individual stock?

If income investing were as simple as picking the stock with the highest yield, everyone would be an expert. Most assume (rightfully so) that yield is heavily influenced by risk, but much more goes into determining yield. Below are several important factors that influence a stock’s yield, along with some illustrative examples:

What is the primary reason you invest in dividend stocks? For me, it is a means to build a growing income that can be relied on during retirement. One of the beauties of dividend investing is it provides you continuous feedback. As the years and decades go by you can see your earnings steadily grow as you invest your money in dividend stocks, and as an added bonus, great dividend stocks will increase their dividend payments each year.

Last year I introduced the Stock Ideas list and it has proven to be immensely popular. The list consists of Dividend Aristocrats, US Broad Dividend Achievers and U.S. Dividend Champions. Here are some highlights on this year’s changes:

As the year draws to a close there were very few companies of note increasing their dividends this week. With that, I thought it would be interesting to see who might be the big dividend raisers in 2010. Here are seven companies for your consideration:

The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats is the most prestigious list of dividend stocks. It is designed to measure the performance of S&P 500 stocks that have followed a policy of consistently increasing dividends every year for at least 25 consecutive years.

There are certainly many ways to categorize the different styles of investing in dividend stocks, including yield, risk, growth, etc. Over the years, I have found that most dividend investing styles fall into one of the three major categories listed below:

Driven by computers that cost more than the average person will earn in their lifetime the investment markets move at light speed. To keep pace hedge funds, mutual funds, institutional investors and multi-billion dollar money managers spend large sums of money on high-tech tools to give them an edge.

Those that have read this space for any period of time are well aware of my enthusiasm for using dividend growth stocks as a vehicle for building long-term wealth and income. However, not all dividend stocks are created equal – there is a discipline to selecting good dividend growth stocks.

What makes a good dividend stock? Every dividend growth investor is looking for a stock that will increase its dividend every year I have found that stocks that are able to do this share some common characteristics.