Author: WP Compendium

If you plan to grow a successful business online, you do not want to learn the hard way that you are doing something illegal.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t prevent someone from taking legal action against you.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau Website)

The introduction of these laws has legal ramifications for several business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, including Google AdWords or AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in most advertising or online marketing networks.

If your website is not compliant, you could also end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

In this article, we look at why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog using simple legal resources and plugins.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing business online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party companies whose products or services you promote

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider for a moment what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not defined what you plan to do with their personal details.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you are promoting and may get paid financial benefits if they purchase it.
• You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are fake and tries to sue you as a result.
• You did not disclose that you have received a free copy in a product review.
• Your website publishes adult information and you didn’t take appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider also the following real case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed at least three of Google’s policies. Although the website owners could technically be sued by Google, more than likely what could happen, is that they would be issued cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risk of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords User
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

it’s important to make sure that your website or blog is legally compliant.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

Compliance with third-party companies terms and policies is important.

You are obligated to let your site users know that your website complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will interact with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display legal information if using their services. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue with your websites with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information-based products using companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will be required to add various legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale in their network …

(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.

You can find many online business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

If you plan to create apps that will integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services on your site using affiliate marketing, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or using Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies)

Essential Legal Pages To Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If your website lacks in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and third-party service providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

• About Us Page
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above pages, you may want to look into implementing any of the pages listed below:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides information about financial areas or income opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

It’s important to add correct disclosures to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets visitors know that you will not receive for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Informs visitors that you will be compensated if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate link.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets site users know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets readers know that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Ideally, you should consult a lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legals folder in your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)

You can then add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from all of your pages …

(It’s important to display legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)

We have written a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar here:

• Adding Widgets To Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Section

Legal Templates

You can find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Visit this website to learn more:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can download a package of website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

These templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new WordPress page for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your server as described previously.

For more details, go here:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using templates, you can simplify things by using plugins.

Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress websites worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages instead …

WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you many headaches.

Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WordPress page.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature is added to your WordPress dashboard menu section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)

This lets you create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate sites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

You can also select from several pre-written legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In Legal Templates)

Legal page templates include:

• Terms of Use (Users are forced to agree to Terms and Conditions before using site)
• Linking Policy
• External Links Policy
• Terms and Conditions
• Refund Policy
• Affiliate Disclosure
• Privacy Policy
• Affiliate Agreement
• Facebook Privacy Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• Antispam Policy
• DoubleClick DART Cookies Policy
• Disclaimer Template
• FTC Disclosure Statement Template
• Medical Disclaimer Template
• Testimonials Disclosure – As per FTC guidelines
• Amazon Affiliate Disclosure Template
• DMCA Policy Template
• California Privacy Rights Policy Template
• Digital Goods Refund Policy Template
• COPPA – Children’s Online Privacy Policy Template
• Blog Comments Policy Template
• Newsletter Subscription Policy and Disclaimer Template
• FTC Disclaimer Widget

To learn more this handy plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs containing over 20 customizable compliance templates for your digital business …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

This plugin lets you easily install professionally-written legal pages such as:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Social Media Disclosure
• Medical Disclaimer
• Terms of Service
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress – Professionally-written legal forms)

Additionally:

• Drag & Drop FTC Disclaimer Widget: Add an FTC Disclaimer to any WordPress sidebar or widget area.
• Customizable EU Cookie Compliance Bar: Display an EU cookie compliance bar if you are getting traffic from the EU and your sites use cookies.

With just one-click you can install almost all of the legal pages your site needs and these professionally written legal pages can be created in your theme and/or as a standalone page outside of your theme.

The plugin developers secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress powered site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.

Go here to learn more:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.

We want your business to be legally protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal documentation, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.

Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.

Resources

Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB
• Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising
• Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act
• CAN-SPAM Act Guide
• Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule
• FTC Regulatory Review Web Page
• FTC Rules and Guides Currently Under Review
• The Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force – Commercial Data Privacy and Innovation in the Internet Economy: A Dynamic Policy Framework
• FTC Staff Report: Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
• FTC Final Guides Governing Endorsements and Testimonials
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

Also …

• Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
• Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
• Google AdSense Help – Required Content
• Google AdWords – Information Collection And Use
• AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
• ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
• Facebook Platform Policies

We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website.

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