Is your WordPress site legal? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you recommend or advertise?
As the cybersphere continues growing at such a fast pace and rules constantly change, it’s absolutely essential to stay on top of what’s happening and make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your web presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for material gain, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau)
The new laws affect several online business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, like PPC advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed into a range of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with certain legalities, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be advertising on your website, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on this website. As stated previously, 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 and regulations that govern business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you offer
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider for a moment what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people allergic reactions.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you will do with the information you have collected.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and may derive a commission if they buy it.
- You haven’t spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
- A visitor claims that your testimonials are misleading and tries to sue you because of it.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site publishes adult-related content and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.
Consider too these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet 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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of 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 with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risks of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords User
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence is legally compliant.
Complying With Third-Party Services
All the leading websites and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You are required to let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with online.
For example:
Google requires you to display certain information when using many of their products or features. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue online with your site with Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell products online with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add certain legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your site complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many resources online that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references to a number of these at the end of this article …
(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you plan to develop applications for your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with access to your legal pages …
(Social networking apps 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 organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need 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 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 websites require you to comply with their policies)
What Legal Pages Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Legally Compliant?
If your website is lacking in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will help your site stay out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the pages above, you may want to consider implementing any of the following pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides health or medical information)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets users be aware that you will not receive for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Discloses to readers that you may benefit financially if they buy through your affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Explains to readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets readers know that you have been compensated in some way to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors 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 Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you should consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder via FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)
You can then add links to these pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can insert these into your WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from all of your pages …
(It’s important to display links to legal information on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your WP sidebar and footer using widgets here:
Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)
To learn more, go here:
Alternatively, you can download a package of website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates were created 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 web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects Federal Trade Commission regulations that came into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described earlier.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress Legal Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use a plugin.
Here are some plugins for WordPress-powered websites you may be interested in using:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you loads of headaches.
Some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like every other page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your main navigation menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
With WPLegal Pages, you can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)
Select from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages – 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
To learn more about using this useful plugin, visit this site:
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress websites containing over twenty customizable legal page templates for your site …
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro)
Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 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 site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.
Go here for more info:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your site to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal page templates, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, it’s important that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and the guidelines and terms of service required by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or advertise online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
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, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.
Additional Information
Below is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to help you 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
- 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
Additionally …
- 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
- 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 legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.
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