Is your WordPress website compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are promoting or selling?
As digital business continues to grow at such a fast pace and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s going on and ensure that your website remains legal, especially if having an online presence is an essential factor in your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for commercial gain, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau)
The introduction of new laws has ramifications for various business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. pay-per-click advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook will suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote most advertising and online merchant networks.
If your online presence is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your site may be subject to legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern business practices online, the importance of complying with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be endorsing online, and that there are plugins for WordPress that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tools listed further below.
Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice about your website or business. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- A user has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you’ll do with their personal details.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their site.
- You haven’t advised visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re recommending and will derive a sales commission if they purchase using your affiliate link.
- You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
- A visitor claims that your testimonials are fake and decides to sue you.
- You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your site includes adult-related content and you have not taken sufficient measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.
Consider too these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, they’re now required to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer received a whopping $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 UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming targeted for litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to make sure that your digital presence stays legally compliant.
Complying With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade in most countries emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your business complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you will do business with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires websites to display certain information if using many of their products. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your website using Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
Or promoting your services or products via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell products online using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add a number of legal pages before your products are approved for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for product vendors)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) 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 do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
You can find many resources online that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you are planning to create applications that integrate with your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)
Basic Legal Pages To Include In Your Site
If you suspect that your website or blog lacks in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following legal pages to your website will help keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external service providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to consider adding one or more of the following pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets visitors know that you will not be receiving any type of payment for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you will receive compensation if they purchase through an affiliate link.
- Sample/Review Copy – Informs readers that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users 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 Legal Content To Your Site
Ideally, you will consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares the legal content for you in typical web page formatting (e.g. HTML), 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 your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar menu (or the footer section of your site) to ensure that users have access to the information from every page …
(Display legal pages to users on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your WP sidebar using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)
More info:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …
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 search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission regulations that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service (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 WordPress page for each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.
Go here to learn more:
Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using templates, you can simplify things using plugins.
Here are some WordPress plugins you may be interested in using:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider installing WP Legal Pages instead …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by 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 – The plugin includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any page on your website.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your legal terms.
- New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will be added to your dashboard section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page type menu)
You can also choose from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin website:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites with over twenty customizable compliance templates for your online business …
To learn more about the plugin 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 of Service
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro – 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.
For more details, go here:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some type of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire a solicitor.
We want your website to be legally protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate essential 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 do business online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the terms of service and guidelines provided by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or endorse online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole range of regulations, some of which you may not 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Additional Information
Here is a useful list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires 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
- Better Business Bureau Website
- 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
And …
- 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 above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now