By Philip van Doorn, MarketWatch

You get yields as high as 5.5%, plus market-beating price gains

Apple’s stock has a yield of 1.73%. That may seem low, but it’s almost as high as the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note, which lacks the iPhone maker’s potential to generate outsized price gains.

You may not think of Apple Inc. (AAPL) as a dividend stock, but, in fact, it pays a quarterly dividend of 47 cents a share, and the company has become remarkably friendly to shareholders, with stock repurchases causing its share count to decline by 6% during fiscal 2014. That helped push the company’s earnings per share up by 14%. (Revenue rose at half that rate.) So Apple will only become more attractive as a dividend-paying stock.

The gadget maker’s yield also looks enticing compared with some alternatives, especially if you play it safe and deposit your money in a bank. The national average rate for a five-year certificate of deposit is only 1.17%, according to RateWatch.

As Tomi Kilgore highlighted, the S&P 500 Index (SPX)has a higher yield than the 10-year Treasury note’s 1.82%. The rate on the 10-year note is down 35 basis points so far this year after dropping 87 basis points in 2014.

Why are U.S. rates still declining? After all, the Federal Reserve ended its massive QE3 bond-buying program, which was meant to hold down long-term rates, a few months ago.

Interest rates are declining because the dollar is rising, owing to the decline in prices for oil and other commodities, as well as uncertainty over the euro because of slowing economic growth, the crisis in Greece and the European Central Bank’s own massive bond-purchasing program, which ECB President Mario Drahi said on Thursday will total 60 billion euros ($69 billion) a month through the end of 2015.

So the dollar’s safe-haven status could spell happiness for the broader U.S. equity market, but especially for dividend stocks, because many yield-hungry investors have nowhere else to go.

Which dividend stocks might be best?

Stocks of large-cap companies that consistently raise their dividends tend to outperform the broader market over long periods. The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Index is made up of more than 50 S&P 500 stocks that have raised their dividends for at least 25 consecutive years. The dividend yields are not necessarily high — the point is that the payouts are continually raised.

The S&P 500 had a total return, with reinvested dividends, of 10% during 2014, while the Dividend Aristocrats Index returned 16%. The five-year total return for the S&P 500 through Monday was 97%, while the Dividend Aristocrats returned 124%.

A great way to play the Dividend Aristocrats without having to pick individual stocks is to buy and hold shares of the ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF (NOBL).

If you would rather make your own picks and enjoy the income, you might begin your research with this list of the 20 S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat stocks with the highest yields:

Here’s the same list in the same order, with forward price-to-earnings ratios, share of analysts with favorable ratings, consensus price targets and implied upside for the stocks:

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