Dividend yield isn't everything in a dividend stock, but it's probably the most important factor investors look at when considering a dividend stock. The dividend yield is the amount a company pays to shareholders expressed as a percentage of the stock price. The reason it's so important is that in contrast to the amount of the actual dividend, it's all about the return on the amount you put in.

If a company pays $1, but you have to put in $100 to get that dollar, your money isn't working nearly as efficiently as if you'd invested $50 to get $0.75. In the first case, you're making 1%, and in the second case, you're making 1.5%. Your money is working harder for you.

Yield isn't everything, though. An extremely high yield could signal potential problems in a company, and sometimes comes with risk and speculation. A moderately high yield, along with stability and dependability, is usually the best dividend recipe for most individual investors.

Realty Income (O 0.52%) and Kimberly-Clark (KMB 1.28%) are two excellent choices right now. Here's why.

A juicy monthly paycheck

Dividend investors love Realty Income because it offers some of everything -- a high yield, monthly income, stability, and reliable growth. Realty Income is a real estate investment trust (REIT), and that means that it has to pay out 90% of its income as dividends. It's one of a few stocks, though, that pay dividends monthly.

It has paid a dividend for 631 consecutive months, and it has raised its dividend for the past 101 quarters. It operates 11,700 properties in a diversified range of industries, but mostly in essential goods -- industries that are resilient under circumstances like lockdowns and inflation.

Grocery stores, convenience stores, and dollar stores, its top three industries, together make up 27% of its portfolio. Dollar General, Walgreens, and 7-Eleven are its three largest tenants, representing 11.9% of Realty Income's annualized contractual rent. Occupancy is nearly 99%, and its historical median is 98.2% versus 94.2% for competing S&P 500 REITs.

Management sees a huge opportunity in net lease properties of $13 trillion, of which only about 4% is penetrated in the U.S., and less than 1% of which is penetrated in Europe. In other words, it's a rock-solid business with the ability to keep paying, and raising, its dividend well into the future. 

Realty Income's dividend yields 4.4% at the current price, making it a top pick for a dependable and high-yielding dividend.

Reliable dividend growth

Kimberly-Clark is a true dividend-lover's stock. It's a Dividend King, which means it has raised its dividend annually for the past 50 years. With its dominant position as a maker of household essentials, it generated over $20 billion in revenue in 2022, and customers rely on its popular brands, such as Huggies diapers and Kleenex tissues. 

These types of giant, established companies typically demonstrate slow growth, and on occasion flat or even declining sales. That's when they pivot toward offering shareholders a juicy dividend, which provides reliable income instead of high stock growth potential. 

However, to counteract sluggish sales, management launched a strategy to jump-start growth in 2019. That met up with soaring demand at the beginning of the pandemic, but the slowdown afterward coincided with inflation, sorely cutting into profits.

Management has since revamped costs and pricing structure to mitigate the concerns. Impressively, CEO Mike Hsu told investors in the 2022 fourth-quarter conference call that "these actions enabled us to fully offset inflation and currency headwinds in 2022 on a dollar basis."

The dividend yields 3.6% at the current price, and investors can expect to enjoy passive income from Kimberly-Clark for decades.