Is your WordPress website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you do business with?
Online laws and regulations are designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these new laws affect various online business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. pay-per-click advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could reject web applications, and you won’t be accepted into various advertising or online marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements according to laws that govern businesses online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be advertising on your website, and that there are solutions that can help your sites become fully compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern your business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you advertise on your website
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider what the implications to your business would be if these situations were to happen:
- A person has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness program.
- The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users allergic reactions.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement that lets subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you plan to do with their personal details.
- Someone steals content from your site and puts it up on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website or blog making your site visitors aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing that you may receive financial benefits if they buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
- Visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you because of it.
- You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy in a product review.
- Your website publishes adult-related content and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider now these real case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to issue everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- 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, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how a website owner can easily become exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
You need to ensure that your website complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
All of the leading websites and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will do business with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue online with your websites using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your business using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell information products with places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages before they will approve your products for selling via their networks …
(ClickBank – policy requirements)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any kind of selling 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 by making sure that your site complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many sites that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you are planning to develop social networking applications for your site users, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about various legal pages …
(Social networking apps also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required 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 whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Legal Pages Does Your Website Need To Be Safe From Legal Compliance Issues?
If your website lacks in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should help your site keep out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and third-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the following pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general content about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs users that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs site users that you will benefit financially if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
- Sample/Review Copy – Explains to visitors that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets site users be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs users that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your Site
Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal directory on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)
You can then add a link to these legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can add these to your sidebar (or the footer of your website or blog) so that users will be able to access legal information from every page …
(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 or footer in WordPress using widgets here:
Using Ready-Made Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared internet forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
More information:
Another option is to purchase a package of cut & paste website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.
To learn more, visit this website:
WordPress Legal Plugins
In addition to using cut & paste legal templates, you can simplify things by using a plugin.
Here are some WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If the idea of creating legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.
Some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – 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 legal pages just like any other page on your website.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to the legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature is added to your navigation menu section …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate sites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)
You can also choose from a number of pre-configured legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – 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
Go here to learn more this powerful plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …
Learn more here:
Legal Suite Pro
(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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.
Go here for more information:
If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford a lawyer.
We want your site to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal page templates, or a plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do business online, you need to ensure that your site is compliant with all laws and regulations and the guidelines and terms of service of third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole range of laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not even be aware of.
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 on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
Legal Resources
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to comply 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
- 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
- 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website or blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)