Category: WordPress Configuration

Is your WordPress site legally compliant? 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 promoting or selling?

As the digital economy continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and rules keep changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s going on and make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your online presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as the BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws affect several business categories, including:

• Any type of advertising, including Google AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of advertising or online merchant networks.

If your web presence is not compliant, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your site may be subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you may be recommending online, and that there are solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become fully compliant, such as the plugins that we list further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice about your website or business. As stated above, the purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you promote on your website or blog

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

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

• Someone suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you will do with their personal details.
• Someone steals content from your website and puts it up on their own site.
• There is no statement on your site making your site visitors aware that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate that you could earn financial benefits if visitors purchase it.
• You don’t spell out the conditions of your return policies.
• A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are false and decides to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website includes adult-related content and you have not taken sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider now the following real case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — 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 information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ 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 broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two 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 with warnings or lose access to the Google program with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could become exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

You need to make sure that your website or blog is fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Leading online companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will interact with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires websites to display legal information when using their products and features. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Monetizing your blogs using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information products through merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their marketplace …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially when using product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.

Various business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you are planning to create social networking applications that will integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about your legal pages …

(Social networking apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon 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 include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

Basic Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If you suspect that your website or blog falls short in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following legal pages to your site will help your site keep out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and external service providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above pages, you may want to look into adding any of the pages listed below if applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general advice about financial areas or income opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding correct web content disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Discloses to your readers that you are not receiving any form of compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Informs site users that you will receive compensation if they buy through your affiliate links.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets visitors know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product you’re writing about by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Website

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

We recommend adding a legals folder to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)

You can then add links to your legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …

(Custom WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can add these to your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors will be able to access the information from every web page …

(It’s important to display links to legal pages to users on all of your website’s pages)

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar, see this tutorial:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In The Site

Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

Go here to learn more:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to purchase a set of website legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal pages were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & 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 each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as previously described.

Go here for more info:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using copy & paste legal templates, you can keep things really simple by using a plugin.

Here are some great legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages)

If the idea of creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using WP Legal Pages …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you loads of headaches.

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

• Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your legal terms.
• New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your main WordPress dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate sites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site drop down menu)

Select from various built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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

To learn more about this plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin

total website compliance and disclaimer solution …

Learn We have written a detailed article about this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(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 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 one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire the services of a legal firm.

We want your website to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal templates, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you are making money online, you need to make sure that your site complies with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or sell online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.

Additional Information

Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet 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
• United States Copyright Office

Plus …

• 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress site using simple legal resources and solutions.

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