People buy "Dividend Champions" for the dividend.

Surprisingly to some, this also is not that great an idea.

As "Goodhart's Law" notes, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". The dividend champions used to be a great list of firms, but then people started looking for firms that had increased their dividend every year for X years. At that point the group started getting a lot of firms doing not that great, who were purposely increasing the dividend a negligible amount each year just to stay in the list!

If you're going to build a dividend payer portfolio, it's better to look for the best quality firms you can find at the yield level you desire. High ROE is probably the simplest metric that adds value.

High rate of sales growth per share isn't bad, either: it would keep you away from things like Pitney Bowes. (nice juicy 3.74% yield, with both business and stock price that have been fading for 25 years now)

Jim