Is your WordPress website legal? Do you know if your site is breaking any rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you sell or recommend?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an overwhelming speed and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to try and stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws has legal ramifications for various business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, including Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a range of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
This guide explains why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using inexpensive legal resources and solutions.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party companies whose products or services you use
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if the situations below were to happen:
- Someone has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness program.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives someone an allergic reaction.
- Your opt-in list provides a statement that lets subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you will do with it.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own site.
- There is no statement on your site letting visitors know that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you may derive a financial benefit if they end up purchasing through your link.
- You have not spelled out the terms of your refund policies.
- Visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you as a result.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website contains adult information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider too the real examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed at least 3 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk being exposed to non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog remains fully compliant with the law.
Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
All the leading companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your site users know that your website complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you engage with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires you to display certain information if using many of their products. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue with your websites with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)
Or promoting your services via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information products via places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements digital product vendors selling through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
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 will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with FTC guidelines and regulations.
A number of business resource sites provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These
If you plan to develop social networking applications that integrate with your site, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting products or services on your site using affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, 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 terminated.
- If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Site
If your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help your website keep out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into adding any of the following pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides advice about financial areas or income opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding the right disclosure information to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets your visitors know that you are not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs readers that you will be compensated if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
- Review/Sample Copy – Discloses to readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs users that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in standard web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory using FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then easily add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can add these to your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that users have access to the information from all of your pages …
(It’s important to display links to your legal pages to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Use Store-Bought Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
To learn more, visit this site:
Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut & paste website legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates)
Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your server as previously described.
More information:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using templates, you can simplify things by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider installing WP Legal Pages instead …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:
- Pre-written Templates – 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 just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any other page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks when users agree to your legal terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will be added to your WordPress dashboard section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)
With WPLegal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site drop down menu)
You can also choose from several built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 about using this plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
total website compliance and disclaimer solution …
For a detailed article about this plugin go here:
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 & Conditions
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro – 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.
More information:
If hiring a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford legal services.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal forms, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or using online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, 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 cannot offer legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.
Additional Resources
Below is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what your site may require to comply and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- FTC 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 – Better Business Bureau
- 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
And …
- Google 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
- Google AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
- ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
- Facebook Platform Policies
We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site using simple solutions.
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