Is your WordPress website legal? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you are recommending or advertising?
As the digital era continues growing at such a fast pace and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is an important part of your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for commercial gain, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “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 ramifications for several business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, like display advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote various advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If you are not in compliance, you could also end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
This guide explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your site using simple and inexpensive solutions.
Is Your Site Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice about your website or business. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever you do business.
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what could happen to your business if any of the following scenarios were to take place:
- A customer has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness program.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people allergic reactions.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you plan to do with it.
- Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your site making visitors aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you are marketing and could receive an affiliate commission if they end up buying via your affiliate link.
- You have not spelled out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
- A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decides to sue you as a result.
- You did not disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your website contains adult information and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider now these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of 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 violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming a target of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords User
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to your site users.
Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your visitors know that your website complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you interact with.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their services. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Making money online with your WordPress blogs with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)
Or promoting your business using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell products online using companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add various legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your website complies with FTC guidelines.
There are many resources online that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide links to resources to a number of these at the end of this article …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you plan to develop apps that will integrate with your site, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide access to your legal pages …
(Social networking apps also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
- If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies)
Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site will keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and external service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into including one or more of these pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides financial information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms (if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add correct disclosures to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets visitors be aware that you’re not being paid for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Discloses to readers that you may receive compensation if they purchase through your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Explains to your readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users know 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the content 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 content for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legal folder on your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add a link to your legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can add these to the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your site) to ensure that users have access to legal information from every web page …
(Display links to your legal pages to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer, refer to this tutorial:
Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)
To learn more, visit this site:
Another option is to download a set of website legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website for every legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described previously.
More info:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using cut & paste templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If manually setting up legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you a great deal of time.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your legal terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item is added to your main navigation menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site drop down menu)
Choose from various built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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 for more details about this powerful plugin:
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details go here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro)
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 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers 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 one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here for more details:
If using the services of legal experts to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.
We want your website to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal documentation, or a plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of business online, you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service required by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or using online. Your website must comply with numerous regulations, many of which you may not even be aware of.
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, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
Additional Legal Information
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your website may require 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 – 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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 legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.
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