Category: WordPress Configuration

Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you are doing business with?

As digital business continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s absolutely vital that you try to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if having a digital presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

These laws has implications for various business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, like contextual ads
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Bloggers
• etc.

If you do not include certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into many advertising or online marketing networks.

You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.

This guide explains the importance of having a compliant website and lists simple ways that will make your WordPress website or blog legally compliant in minutes.

Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations in your country or region.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• A person has a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you will do with the information you’ve collected.
• Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog making visitors aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing and will get paid a sales commission if they buy it.
• You have not spelled out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
• Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are fake and decides to sue you as a result.
• You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy of a product you reviewed.
• Your site publishes adult-related content and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider also the documented examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card info to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many internet 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 picked at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 cautions or lose access entirely 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 through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA or PPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

It’s vitally important to ensure 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

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

You are required to let your site users know that your website complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you do business with online.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires websites to display certain information when using many of their services and features. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue online with your website using Google AdSense online advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell products online through merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially when concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners 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 making sure that your website complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.

Various business resource sites provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide a number of references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

If you are planning to create apps for your website, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …

(Social networking apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.

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

What Legal Information Pages Should I Add To My Website To Be Legally Compliant?

If you suspect that your web site falls short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help your website stay out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and external service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to consider adding any of these compliance pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides health or medical advice)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to media 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 – Lets your visitors be aware that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Notifies your visitors that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets your visitors know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs users that you have been compensated in some way 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 Content To Your Site

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

Uploading Legal Pages Manually

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend creating a legal directory on your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and display clearly to your visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) so that visitors will be able to access legal information from every web page …

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

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

• Adding Widgets To Your Sidebar

Legal Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

Go here for more info:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page on your website for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your server as described earlier.

More information:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using templates, you can keep things very simple using WordPress plugins.

Here are some great WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages instead …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time.

Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks only when user agrees to your terms.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear in your main dashboard section …

(WP Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

With WPLegal Pages, you can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

Choose from various built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – 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 using this powerful plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin

The Compliance Bar WordPress Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your site …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 Use
• 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 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 one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford legal services.

We want your business to be safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal documents, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate necessary 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 make money online, you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or advertise online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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 cannot offer legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law regarding your specific business.

Legal Resources & References

Below is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site 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
• BBB – 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

See Also …

• Google Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
• Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
• 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

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site.

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