Is your WordPress site legal? Do you know if your site is breaking any rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you are endorsing or offering?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital that you try to stay on top of what’s going on and ensure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if having an online presence plays a significant part in your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for material gain, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)
The new laws affect several online business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, like pay-per-click advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed into a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website or blog(s) may be required to comply with various legalities, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be using online, and that there are plugins for WordPress that can help your sites become more compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. As stated previously, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party companies whose products or services you offer
The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider what could happen to your business if the scenarios below were to occur:
- A person has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online workout program.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users skin rashes.
- You’ve informed subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you’ll do with it.
- Someone steals your content and publishes it on their website.
- There is no statement on your site letting your site users know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re promoting and could derive a commission if visitors buy it.
- You have not spelled out the terms of your refund and return policies.
- A visitor claims that your testimonials are false and decides to sue you.
- 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 did not take appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.
Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’re now required to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with 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 information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 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 2 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 notices 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 a business owner can easily become exposed to the risks of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence has the right legal pages and information accessible to site visitors.
Complying With 3rd-Party Services
Compliance with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are required to let your site users know that your business complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you engage with online.
For example:
Google requires you to display certain information if using their services. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your site with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell information products using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add legal pages to your site before your products are approved for sale in their marketplace …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially when using product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business 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 documented on their website, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC guidelines and regulations.
Various sites provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references to a number of these at the end of this article …
(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you plan to develop social networking applications for your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with access to your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, 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 if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and 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)
What Legal Information Pages Does My Website Need To Be Compliant?
If your website or blog is falling short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of the pages listed below if applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general health or medical content)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct web content disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets visitors know that you are not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Informs site users that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Discloses to your visitors that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets site users be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the post.
- 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legal directory to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website) so that visitors will be able to access the information from every web page …
(Display legal pages 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 menu here:
Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and website forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
Go here for more details:
Another option is to purchase a set of website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website for each legal form you want added 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.
Go here for more information:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using legal templates, another option is to use plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites that you may be interested in using:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit 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 like any WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will be added to your navigation area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)
With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)
Select from several built-in legal templates …
(WP 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 useful plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress websites that contains over twenty customizable legal page templates for your online presence …
Learn more about the plugin 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 of Service
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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 license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
For more details, go here:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a solicitor.
We want your website to be safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documentation, or a plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you quickly generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, 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 regulatory agencies and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Non-compliance 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law pertaining to your business.
Additional Information
Here is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- BBB – 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
Additionally …
- 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
We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website using inexpensive methods and resources.
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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)