Is your WordPress website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you promote or sell?
As the digital era continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s absolutely essential that you stay informed about what’s going on and make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence plays a significant role in your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as the BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws has legal ramifications for several business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, like text link advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote many advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
This article explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and presents simple and inexpensive methods that will help make your WordPress site legally compliant quickly and easily.
Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice on this website. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose products or services you promote on your website or blog
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider for a minute what the implications to your business would be if these scenarios were to take place:
- A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone skin rashes.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement letting subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you’ll do with it.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your site informing visitors that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and will derive a sales commission if visitors buy it.
- You did not spell out the terms of your refund policies.
- Visitors claim your testimonials are all fake and try to sue you.
- You did not disclose that you received a free copy in your product review.
- Your site includes adult information and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider now these real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he was also ordered 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 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 UIDs. Many 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 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 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 to the Google program whose policies 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 through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
it’s important to make sure that your website stays fully compliant with the law.
Compliance With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
All the big companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You are required to let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will engage with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires you to display legal information if using many of their services. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your blog using Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
Or promoting your products using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information products through companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling products through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC guidelines.
There are many business resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you are planning to create social networking applications for your website users, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networks also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products online via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)
What Legal Information Does Your Website Need To Be Covered Against Legal Compliance Issues?
If your website or blog falls short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site will help you stay out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into adding one or more of the following pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides financial information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you provide users with access to media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding correct disclosure information to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs readers that you are not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you will be compensated if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets your visitors know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to your visitors that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors know 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.
Adding Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages 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 server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legal directory to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add links to these pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can add these to your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your site) to ensure that users can access the information from every page …
(Display links to your legal pages to users on all of your site’s pages)
To learn more about adding links to pages on your sidebar menu, refer to this tutorial:
Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable internet forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
For more information, go here:
Alternatively, you can download a package of website legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission regulations that came into effect in 2012)
- 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 web server as described previously.
More info:
Legal Pages – Plugins
As well as using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use a plugin.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites you may be interested in checking out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If the idea of setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your website a lot easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. When the user agrees to the legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear inside your dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
You have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, affiliate websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)
Choose from several pre-configured 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
For more details about using this plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Legal Suite Pro
(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 & Conditions
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress 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 the plugin on all of your websites.
To learn more, go here:
If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a legal expert.
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 legal documentation, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site complies with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service for 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or endorsing online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole set of regulations, some 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide 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 all legal requirements concerning your specific business.
Resources
Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet 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
- 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
- US Copyright Office
Also …
- 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 you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add legal pages to your website.
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com