Category: WordPress Configuration

As a business owner, the last thing you want is to find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

Online laws are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Do a search online for “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 affect several online business categories, including:

• Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote various advertising and affiliate marketing networks.

If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

This article explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your site.

Is Your Website Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As stated above, the aim of this article is only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws and regulations governing business online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of companies whose services or products you recommend

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you’ll do with their personal details.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog telling visitors that you are recommending a product as an affiliate that you could earn a commission if they decide to purchase via your affiliate link.
• You didn’t spell out the conditions of your refund and return policies.
• A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are misleading and decides to sue you as a result.
• You did not disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your site contains adult-related information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.

Consider also the actual case studies of costly compliance breaches below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information 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 private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes 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 independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking 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 with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how a business owner can easily be exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

You need to make sure that your website or blog complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies

Leading online companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.

You must let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with online.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires your site to display certain information if using their products. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue with your online properties with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell digital products using places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies 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 any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website complies with FTC regulations.

There are many resources online that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the additional 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)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you are planning to develop apps that integrate with your site, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything on your site using affiliate marketing, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.

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

Basic Legal Pages To Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If your website is lacking in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following legal pages to your website should keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and third-party service providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to consider implementing any of the following pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to download videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the correct type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets users know that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets site users be aware that you will receive compensation if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
• Review/Sample Copy – Disclosure that informs users that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs site users 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 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 Site

Ideally, you will consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in typical web page formatting (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 in your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages via FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website) so that visitors have access to the information from all pages …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your WordPress sidebar using widgets here:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To The Sidebar

Templates

You can easily find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to websites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

To learn more, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

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

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website templates 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 pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new WordPress page for each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.

Go here to learn more:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using templates, another option is to use plugins.

Here are some great plugins for WordPress-driven sites you should check out:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you time.

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

• Built-in 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 the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any other WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to your terms, the page unlocks.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your dashboard menu section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche websites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page type dropdown menu)

Select from various pre-written legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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

Go here to learn more this handy plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over 20 customizable legal pages for your digital business …

For more details go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance 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 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. 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 (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

Go here for more information:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance from a legal expert.

We want your business to be safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal templates, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software 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 do business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or using online. Your digital presence must comply with a number of laws and regulatory guidelines, many 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice here. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law pertaining to your business.

References And Resources

Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet its 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
• 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• United States Copyright Office

And …

• 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 you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add essential legal pages to your site.

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