In turbulent times, the conservative investors tends to turn to a safe zone, in particularly, dividend-focused exchange traded funds (ETFs).

Dividend-focused ETFs are great in that they enable your money work for you on its own while enabling investors to gain access to various markets and sectors.  One may wonder how to chose a stable dividend ETF. After all, at the end of 2008 there were 14 different such ETFs to chose from.

Here are some things to consider when choosing a dividend ETF:

• Pick ETFs that hold stocks with nice, sustainable dividend yields
• Focus on ETFs that hold stocks with a history of paying out dividends and are hoarding enough cash to cover the current payout, states John Spence of Market Watch.
• Be mindful of ETFs that are heavily concentrated on a single sector which may be in trouble. For example, financials. After all, when earnings fall, dividends do, too.
• Know exactly what stocks your ETF holds and how concentrated these holdings are.

As uncertainty and volatility continue to overshadow the market, investors will continue to look for ways to moderate the risk of their portfolios, making dividend ETFs attractive.  We may sound like a broken record, but do your homework, assess your appetite for risk and know what your overall financial goals are when choosing the right ETF for your portfolio.

Some ETFs to consider are:

First Trust Value Line Dividend Index (FVD): down 6.8% over the last month and generating a yield of 4.2%

WisdomTree International SmallCap Dividend (DLS): down 8.9% over the past month and generating a yield of 6.5%

Dan Caplinger for The Motley Fool reports that after the tech bubble in the 1990s, dividend investing came back into style and Wall Street responded with the advent of dividend-paying ETFs. Many investors have had a rough time lately, and current market conditions have yielded bigger losses on dividend stocks than what they’ve gotten back in quarterly checks.

Here are five major dividend ETFs, all assembled in different ways:

• WisdomTree LargeCap Dividend Index Fund (DLN): Takes the 300 largest dividend-paying stocks and weights them according to the total amount of dividends each company pays.
• iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index Fund (DVY): Includes dividend-paying stocks that have maintained or increased dividends in the last 5 years.
• PowerShares Dividend Achievers (PFM): Screens for companies that have increased dividend payouts for the past 10 years and takes the highest paying stocks among them.
• SPDR S&P Dividend ETF (SDY): Takes 50 high-yielding companies that have raised dividends over the last 25 years.
• First Trust Value Line Dividend Index Fund (FVD): Uses value-line safety rankings to screen for stocks that are safer-than-average, and then takes high dividend yields of companies with market caps over $1 billion; takes an equal-weight approach.

After years of strong performance from financial stocks, many investors who got into the game late got burned. Many financial companies paid out beautiful dividends, but this is not the case right now. As of 2007, the bottom fell out of the sector and the ETFs suffered more than the broad market.

To approach dividend investing by what stock shave the highest yields is not the best way to go about your strategy. Instead, think about diversification and this will help avert the chance of big losses in little time.

For more dividend yields, you can visit WisdomTree’s Dividend Yield Analysis page.