The Wall Street Journal’s Matt Phillips has a simple message for investors: Do not forget about dividends.

“Dividends matter! Dividends matter! Dividends matter!” Phillips writes on the Journal’s “MarketBeat” blog. He references recent commentary from Standard & Poor’s Howard Silverblatt as proof. “We are near another all time high for total return, even as stocks remain 10.2% off their all time high,” Silverblatt said. “We need a 0.14% total return to set a new record, which includes today’s dividends adding .02%.”

Silverblatt says the indicated dividend rate is “up 13.0% from 12/30/2011, 2012 payment estimated to be an all time high. Given the timing of the increases, unless issues decrease their dividends (in which case don’t worry about dividends -> means everything is going down) 2013 already has a +3% payment increase built in.”