Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you do business with?
As the digital way of life continues growing at such a rapid pace and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s absolutely essential that you try to stay informed about what’s happening and make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if having a digital presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for material gain, then you will 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.
(Better Business Bureau)
The new laws affect several online business activities, including:
- Any type of advertising, e.g. display advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in a number of advertising and online merchant networks.
If your online presence is not in compliance, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
This guide explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and describes simple resources and solutions to make your website or blog legally compliant quickly and easily.
Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations in your country or region.
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider for a minute what the implications to your business would be if these scenarios were to take place:
- A user suffers a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer gives people an adverse reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you will do with their details.
- Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their site.
- There is no statement on your website letting your site users know that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and will derive a financial benefit if they purchase it.
- You have not spelled out the conditions of your refund and return policies.
- Someone claims your testimonials are all fake and decides to sue you because of it.
- You haven’t disclosed that you were given a free copy of a product in your review.
- Your site publishes adult-related content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider also the documented case studies of costly compliance breaches listed below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- 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 children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 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% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation 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 cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to risk being a target of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdWords User
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s vitally important to ensure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and information displayed to all site users.
Compliance With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
All the leading companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you engage with online.
For example:
Google requires you to display legal information when using many of their services or features. This includes using features like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue online with your websites with Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
Or promoting your products via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information-based products using companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add a number of legal pages to your site before your products are approved for sale …
(Policy requirements product vendors selling through ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to add clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially if you plan to sell online with the aid of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your website complies with all FTC guidelines.
Many business resource sites provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you plan to create applications that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with information about various legal pages …
(Social networking 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 websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services online via affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your website lacks in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website should keep your business out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Website Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into implementing one or more of these pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides health or medical advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs site users that you are not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Notifies users that you will be compensated if they buy through an affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets your visitors be aware that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to your readers that you were 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 satisfy 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 Pages To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers 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 your legal pages to this directory via FTP …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add links to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors will be able to access legal information from every web page …
(Display links to your legal information on all of your website’s pages)
To learn more about adding links to pages on your sidebar menu using widgets, refer to this tutorial:
Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared internet forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)
To learn more, visit this website:
Alternatively, you can download a package of legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
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 these to your server as described previously.
More information:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you loads of headaches.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin:
- Built-in 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 your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information is then 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 any other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. When users agree to your terms, the page unlocks.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will be added to your main navigation menu section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
With WP Legal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)
You can also select from several pre-written 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
Visit the plugin site to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over 20 customizable legal page templates for your digital business …
More info:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
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 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them 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 one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use the 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, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.
We want your site to be legally protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or advertise 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
References And Resources
Here is a useful list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your site may require 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 – 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
- US Copyright Office
See 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
- 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 compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website using inexpensive resources and plugins.
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