Is your WordPress site legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you are selling or promoting?
As the digital era continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your digital presence plays a significant part in your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for material gain, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau)
The new laws has legal ramifications for several online business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in various advertising or online merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
In this guide, we look at the importance of having a compliant website and present inexpensive resources and solutions to help make your website legally compliant.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations governing business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you recommend
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider for a moment what the implications to your business would be if any of the following incidents were to take place:
- Someone suffers a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate gives someone allergic reactions.
- You’ve told subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you will do with it.
- Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own site.
- There is no statement on your site letting your site users know that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and may earn a financial benefit if visitors buy it.
- You have not spelled out the conditions of your refund policies.
- Someone claims the testimonials on your site are misleading and tries to sue you.
- You did not disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website publishes adult-related information and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underage children.
Consider now the following real 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 (including credit card info to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $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 without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape 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 independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 with warnings 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 easy it is to risk becoming exposed to litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords Advertiser
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
It’s imperative to make sure that your website complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Complying with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies with 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.
Here are just 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 website with Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
Or promoting your services using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you plan to sell information-based products with places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages before they will approve your products for selling via their marketplace …
(Policy requirements for selling products via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC regulations.
You can find many sites that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide links to and additional references to some 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)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop apps for your site users, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- 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 services or products on your site using affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies)
Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and external service providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to look into adding any of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general money-making information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add the right types of disclosure pages to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not receive compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Informs your readers that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they purchase through an affiliate link.
- Sample/Review Copy – Lets readers be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you have been compensated in some way to write the content.
- 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Website
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site
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 them for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)
You can then easily add links to your pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can insert these into your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors will be able to access legal information from every web page …
(Display links to legal information on all of your website’s pages)
If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar menu and footer in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms)
For more details, visit this website:
Another option is to download a set of website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages)
These legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines that came into effect in 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 for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your web server as previously described.
Go here for more information:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using cut & paste legal templates, another option is to use a plugin.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:
- 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 basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information is then 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 other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will be added to your main WP dashboard section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings)
You can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche websites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)
Select from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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
Visit the plugin website to learn more this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
The Compliance Bar WordPress Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business …
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro)
Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 – 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. Your legal pages can be 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 websites.
More information:
If using the services of legal experts to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a legal firm.
We want your website to be legally 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-prepared legal documents, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, 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 commercial activity online, it’s important that your website complies with all regulations and any guidelines and terms of service for 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or advertising online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of 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 offer no legal advice here. We strongly advise you to 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 & References
Here is a useful list of additional 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
- FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- Better Business Bureau – 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
- United States 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 compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog using inexpensive resources and solutions.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group