Category: WordPress Configuration

As a business owner, you do not want to learn the hard way that you have done something illegal.

Online laws and regulations were designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws affect various business activities, including:

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

If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook will suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to participate in many advertising and online merchant networks.

If your online business is not in compliance, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

This guide explains the importance of having a compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website.

Is Your Site Legally Compliant?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern business practices online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you recommend

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

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

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate gives people allergic reactions.
• You’ve informed your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you plan to do with the details you have collected.
• Someone copies content from your site and puts it up on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website letting your visitors know that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and will earn an affiliate commission if visitors purchase using your link.
• You have not spelled out the terms of your refund and return policies.
• A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are false and tries to sue you because of it.
• You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy of the product in your review.
• Your site includes adult information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider also these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details 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 from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 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 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 cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how a website owner can easily become exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords User
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

It’s vitally important to ensure that your website or blog is fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.

You are expected to let your site visitors know that your business complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you will do business with online.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires websites to display certain information if using their services and product features. This includes using services like Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Monetizing your blogs using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

And even promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell digital products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to sell products using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

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 happened in the past, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site 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. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your site complies with all FTC guidelines.

There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

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

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

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

(Apps for social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products online using affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies)

What Compliance Pages Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Compliant?

If you suspect that your website is lacking in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following legal pages to your site will keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external service providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of the pages listed below:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general health or medical content)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you will not be receiving any form of payment for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to readers that you may be compensated if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Disclosure that informs your readers that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Lets site users be aware that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets users 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 should have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

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

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your site) so that visitors will be able to access legal information from every web page …

(It’s important to display legal information to visitors on all of your site’s pages)

We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar menu and footer in WordPress using widgets here:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In The Sidebar Menu

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

Visit this website to learn more:

• Find Legal Forms

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

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: includes inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

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

For more information, go here:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using cut & paste templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some great plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …

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

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

• Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by 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 clicks of the mouse.
• 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 – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other page on your site.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When the user agrees to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will display inside your WordPress dashboard menu …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate/review websites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site menu)

You can also select from a number of pre-written 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 this great plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …

Learn We have written an in-depth article about this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 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 plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.

To learn more, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of legal experts to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford legal services.

We want your business to be legally safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal page templates, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by third-party sites that you may be promoting or recommending online. Your website or blog must comply with numerous 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, we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to comply and meet its legal obligations:

• 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 – 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

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

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 above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple and cost-effective solutions.

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