Are added spaces needed for a domainname in title/ meta/ h1 ?

[lionstail]

Our new website, let's just call it funkybluewidgets.net, has just gone live- and i am wondering if i can leave the site name as one long word, or if I need to add spaces in between the keywords, if i want to rank for those keywords.

For example, if the title says: Welcome to FunkyBlueWidgets.net, will it be able to rank for the term Blue Widgets?

OR, will it be better to change the title to Welcome to Funky Blue Widgets (or Funky Blue Widgets.net), which isn't as good for branding, but keeps the keywords as distinct units?

Do search engines consider spaces as required (or preferred) between keywords?

All advice in this regard is appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Robert Charlton]

For ranking purposes, I'd keep the keywords as distinct units.

[lionstail]

thanks (though not exactly the answer i was hoping for!). is it possible to rank well if they're joined, or not really?

[tedster]

Google's algo does try to discern individual words in concatenated strings such as runondomainnames. But if you've got an important keyword in there, then it can really help your ranking to make the keywords clear with added spaces.

I've got a client whose domain and company name is three concatenated words. They rank #1 with sitelinks for the separated version of their name, even though they insist on never separating the words on their site. However, they didn't used to rank well at all - it took lots of backlinks with anchor text that didn't follow their company's style guideline!

I recommended early on that they loosen up about the spaces if they wanted to rank - but they waited it out.

[driller41]

Isnt it better to go with funky-blue-widgets.net and then refer to "Welcone to funky blue widgets"

I know it can look spammy though.

[lionstail]

sorry to be dense, but what looks spammy?

also, it's too late to add the dashes in the url (i wasn't in charge of purchasing it, and this is what we've got!)

[nomis5]

My top site is two words which are not separated by spaces or hyphen. My second site most profitable site is the same, but in this case both words are important. They do well and as far as I can see it has the desired effect. I would agree that separating the words with hyphens looks spammy - definitely a bit cheap and tacky.

Go with what you feel most comfrtable with, I think those hyphens and spaces are uneccessary.

[driller41]

Generally anything more than 2 dashes is a bad sign for Google.

so my-best-widget.com is ok, just.

but say buy-cheap-widgets-online.com is overdoing it.