Is your WordPress site 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 services or products you promote or advertise?
As the digital realm continues growing at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital that you try to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if having an online presence plays a significant role in your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws has legal implications for several online business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, including inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in a number of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your business online is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website(s) are required to comply with various legalities in accordance with the laws that govern business practices online, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be selling online, and that there are solutions that can help your online properties become compliant, such as the tools listed further below.
Is Your Site Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what could happen to your business if any of these situations were to happen:
- Someone has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness program.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you plan to do with it.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their website.
- There is no statement on your site informing your visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you’re marketing that you will get paid financial benefits if visitors end up purchasing using your affiliate link.
- You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are false and decides to sue you.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site publishes adult information and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.
Consider too the real case studies of costly compliance breaches below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received a massive $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 using software that scrapes UIDs. Many 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 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 notices 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 easy it is to risk becoming exposed to litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords User
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
it’s important to make sure that your website or blog is fully compliant with the law.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies
Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You are required to let your visitors know that your website complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with.
For example:
Google requires websites to display certain information if using their products or service. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your WordPress site using Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
Or promoting your site via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information products through places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add various legal pages to your site before your products are approved for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to add clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners for breaches of regulation 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 site is compliant with FTC guidelines.
You can find many online business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources to some of these at the end of this article …
(It’s important to structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you plan to create social networking applications for your website, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide access to your legal pages …
(Apps for social networks also require compliance)
- If you are not sure 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 plan to promote products or services online via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with all 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 interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Common Legal Pages To Add To Your Website
If you suspect that your website falls short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and third-party providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into adding one or more of these compliance pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the correct type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Discloses to your visitors that you will not receive compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you will derive some form of financial or similar form of benefit if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets site users be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors know that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets readers 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then easily add links to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site
Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can add these to your sidebar menu (or the footer of your site) so that visitors have access to legal information from all of your site’s pages …
(Display links to your legal information on all of your website’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer in WordPress using widgets here:
Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
Go here to learn more:
Another option is to download a package of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates)
Cut & Paste website legal templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.
Go here for more details:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, you can simplify things by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great plugins for WordPress-powered websites that you may be interested in checking out:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other WP page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks when the user agrees to your terms.
- New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your main WordPress dashboard area …
(WP Legal Pages – Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
With WP Legal Pages, you have the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate/review websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)
Choose from a number of 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 this handy plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable legal page templates for your digital presence …
For more details go here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro)
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 – 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 less than one minute and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).
More info:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire a solicitor.
We want your business to be safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal page templates, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online, you need to make sure that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and the terms of service and guidelines of 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or using online. If your website doesn’t comply 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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
References And Resources
Here is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what your website may require to remain 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site using simple and cost-effective methods and resources.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)