Category: Website Planning

One of the worst predicaments a website owner can find themselves in is to break the law.

As digital business continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s happening and make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your digital presence is an integral factor in your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Search online “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 new laws affect several business activities, including:

• Any kind of advertising, like Google AdWords
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote many advertising or online marketing networks.

In addition, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.

In this guide, we discuss why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using inexpensive solutions.

Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern business online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose services or products you offer

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness program.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone skin rashes.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you plan to do with the details you’ve collected.
• Someone copies content from your site and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your site making your site users aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing and could earn a commission if they buy it.
• You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Online visitors claim the testimonials on your site are misleading and decide to sue you.
• You did not disclose that you were given a free copy of the product in your review.
• Your site includes adult-related content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.

Consider now the following real examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’re now required to give a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $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 using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many internet 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 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% 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming targeted for non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords Advertiser
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

You need to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.

You must let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you engage with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display legal information if using their products. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue online with your sites with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your business through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

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

(ClickBank – policy requirements for sellers)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations.

You can find many business resource sites that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These

If you are planning to develop applications for your website users, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, 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 are required to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• 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, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site

If your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following legal pages to your site will help you stay out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external service providers, and avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us Page
• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into implementing one or more of these legal pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general money-making information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not be receiving any form of payment for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your readers know that you will be compensated if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Review/Sample Copy – Discloses to visitors that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets visitors know that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets your visitors 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 Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Website

Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend adding a legals directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar (or the footer of your website or blog) so that visitors will be able to access the information from every page …

(Display links to legal information on all of your site’s pages)

If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Add Widgets To The WordPress Blog Sidebar Navigation Menu

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Go here for more information:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to download a package of legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

These legal templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your 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 (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission regulations brought into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• ToS & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

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 pages and publish or upload these to your server as described earlier.

Go here for more details:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using cut & paste legal templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some great legal WordPress plugins you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing WP Legal Pages instead …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you many headaches.

Some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin are:

• Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your legal terms.
• New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will be added to your WordPress dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

You can create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, niche sites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)

You can also choose from several built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Built-In 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

Visit this website to learn more this plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

total website compliance & disclaimer solution …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 powered site. Your legal pages can be 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 websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

Visit this website to learn more:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of legal experts to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your business to be safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or a legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software 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 are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is compliant with all regulations and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by third-party sites that you may be promoting or offering online. Your digital presence must comply with a number of regulations, many 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.

Additional Resources

Here is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Better Business Bureau Website
• 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
• United States 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
• 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 legal pages to your WordPress site using simple resources and plugins.

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