Category: Engagement Plugins

One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

As the digital realm continues to grow at such a rapid pace and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s absolutely vital that you stay informed about what’s going on and ensure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if having a digital presence plays an important part in your business strategy.

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

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws has legal consequences for several business activities, including:

• Any form of advertising, including PPC advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

Without certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

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

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

Does Your Site Comply With The Law?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. As stated above, the aim of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose services or products you endorse

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Consider for a minute what would happen to your business if any of these scenarios were to occur:

• A customer has a cardiac arrest after they use your online workout program.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users skin rashes.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement informing prospective subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not defined what you’ll do with the details you have collected.
• Someone copies content from your site and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your site informing your visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing that you could receive financial benefits if they buy it.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• Online visitors claim the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website contains adult information and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider too these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’re now required to issue 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 private details about children.
• 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, resulting thousands of dollars 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 in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of 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 with warnings or lose access to the Google program with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could easily become exposed to the risk of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

it’s important to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.

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

You must let your site users know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will engage with online.

For example:

Google requires you to display legal information if using many of their products. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue with your blogs using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your business using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell products online through merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add legal pages to your website before your products are approved for sale in their networks …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially if you plan to sell or promote online using product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC regulations.

Various resources online provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you are planning to create applications that will integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your site with 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 - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
• If you’ve been wondering 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 websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

What Compliance Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Covered Against Legal Compliance Issues?

If your web site is falling short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help you stay out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to look into implementing any of these compliance pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding correct disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets users be aware that you are not being paid for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs users that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Informs readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your visitors be aware that you were compensated in some form to write the post.
• 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Site

If someone prepares and delivers 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 creating a legals directory on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add these to the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your site) to ensure that users will be able to access the information from all your web pages …

(Display legal information to visitors on all of your site’s pages)

We have created a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu here:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To Your Blog

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com

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

Cut And 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 quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your legal web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• ToS & 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 page for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.

More information:

• Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use a plugin.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages instead …

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

Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:

• Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When users agree to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

With WP Legal Pages, you have the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

Select from various built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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 great plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …

Go here to learn more about the plugin:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

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 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 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 less than one minute 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).

To learn more, visit this website:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing some kind of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your website to be legally protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documents, or a plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for third-party sites that you may decide to promote or recommend online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumer rights, 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. 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 pertaining to your specific business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• 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

Plus …

• 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 this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website.

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