Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you recommend or offer?
As the digital economy continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vital that you try to stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your website remains legal, especially if your online presence plays a significant role in your overall business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of new laws has legal implications for various business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, including PPC advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook could disapprove web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote many advertising or online merchant networks.
If your online presence is not in compliance, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your site are required to comply with various legalities, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you may be offering on your site, and that there are solutions for WordPress that can help your websites become more compliant, such as the tools listed further below.
Is Your Site Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice about your website or business. 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 federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you advertise
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Consider what could happen to your business if the scenarios below were to take place:
- A customer suffers a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone an adverse reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you’ll do with it.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website or blog letting your site users know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re recommending that you will derive a commission if they buy it.
- You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund or return policies.
- Your visitors claim the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you because of it.
- You haven’t disclosed that you were given a free copy of a product you reviewed.
- Your site contains adult information and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider also these actual 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 to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- 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 private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ 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 breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 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 whose policies they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk being exposed to litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website has the right legal pages and information accessible to all site visitors.
Complying With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are required to let your site visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires you to display certain information if using many of their products and service. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Making money online with your WordPress site with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information-based products through companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been 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 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. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your site is compliant with FTC regulations.
You can find many resources sites for businesses that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to resources to a number 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 Applications
If you plan to develop applications for your site users, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Social networking apps also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything online via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Essential Legal Pages To Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your website is falling short in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above pages, you may want to look into implementing one or more of these pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general financial content)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the correct types of disclosure pages to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not receive for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you will derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they act on your recommendation and purchase through one of your affiliate links.
- Sample/Review Copy – Lets your readers be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets site users know that you were compensated in some form to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets readers 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 Content To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Site
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 directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your website) so that users will be able to access the information from all your pages …
(Display legal pages to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar using widgets, see this tutorial:
Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
For more details, visit this website:
Another option is to purchase a set of cut and paste website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
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 these to your web server as described earlier.
More info:
WordPress Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using templates, you can simplify things using plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-driven sites you may be interested in checking out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages)
If manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced 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 benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks when user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear inside your WordPress dashboard area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)
You can create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, niche sites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)
You can also select from various pre-configured 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
Go here to learn more about this useful plugin:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Go here to learn more:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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 of Use
- 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 powered site. You can have legal pages 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 sites.
More info:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire a legal expert.
We want your site to be legally protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal content, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily 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, it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service required by 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or selling online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole set of regulations, some 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law regarding your specific business.
Additional Legal Information
Here is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to comply and meet legal obligations:
- FTC 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 – 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website.
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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