Is your WordPress website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are selling or endorsing?
Online laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not prevent someone from taking legal action against your business.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws has consequences for various business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, e.g. Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you will not be accepted into most advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
In addition, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your site(s) are required to comply with certain legalities according to laws that govern businesses online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be advertising on your site, and that there are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. As stated earlier, the aim of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern business practices online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you use
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Are you at risk? Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- Someone has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you promote as an affiliate marketer gives people skin rashes.
- You’ve informed subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you will do with their personal details.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your site making visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you are endorsing that you may get paid a sales commission if they purchase it through your affiliate link.
- You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
- Someone claims the testimonials on your site are fake and tries to sue you because of it.
- You haven’t disclosed that you were given a free copy of a product you reviewed.
- Your website includes adult-related content and you have not taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider now these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to provide everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- 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 private information about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it 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% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking 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 with warnings or lose access to the Google program they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how a business owner can easily become exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
it’s important to ensure that your website complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You are required to let your site visitors know that your website complies will all legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will do business with online.
For example:
Google requires you to display certain information when using their services. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your WordPress site with Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your site using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell digital products using companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation 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 chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
A number of business resource sites provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These
If you are planning to develop social networking applications for your website users, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Social networking apps also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include 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 take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site
If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your site should help your website keep out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and third-party providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into implementing one or more of these pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides financial information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the correct type of web content disclosure is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs site users that you will not receive any kind of payment for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors be aware that you may derive some form of financial or similar kind of benefit if they purchase through an affiliate link.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets your readers know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product you’re writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Informs your visitors that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs users that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been created, 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 web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory using FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add links to your legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from all pages …
(Display legal information to users on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu and footer in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)
Go here to learn more:
Alternatively, you can download a set of cut and paste legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms)
These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.
You can either create a new page on your website for each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.
More information:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using legal templates, you can keep things very simple by using a plugin.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users that you may be interested in checking out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages instead …
WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you a great deal of time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any other page on your site.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information is then 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 any other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your main navigation menu …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, niche sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Page type drop down menu)
Select from a number of pre-written legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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 about using this useful plugin:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 & Conditions
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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. 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 websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here for more info:
If hiring legal experts to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider implementing some kind of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.
We want your business to be legally protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to ensure that your website complies with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for third-party sites that you may be promoting or recommending online. Your website or blog must comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
Additional Resources
Here is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your website may require to remain compliant and meet legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- 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
- US Copyright Office
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 compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and inexpensive solutions.
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