Is your WordPress website legal? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you recommend or sell?
Online laws and regulations are designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes goods and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)
The new laws has legal implications for various business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook will disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
This guide explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and shows you inexpensive ways that will help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws governing business practices online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you endorse
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be if any of these situations were to take place:
- A user suffers a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link an allergic reaction.
- You’ve informed subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you’ll do with their personal details.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own website.
- You haven’t informed your visitors that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and may receive a sales commission if they end up buying through your affiliate link.
- You haven’t spelled out the terms of your refund and return policies.
- Online visitors claim that your testimonials are fake and decide to sue you.
- You did not disclose that you have received a free copy in your product review.
- Your site includes adult content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underage children.
Consider now the following real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping 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 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 entirely 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 risk being a target of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
it’s important to make sure that your website complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies
Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site users know that your website complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you will interact with.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires websites to display certain information when using many of their services. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your blogs using Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell digital products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add legal pages to your site before your products are approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank product vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners 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 any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with FTC regulations.
There are many online resources that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(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 that will integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies)
What Compliance Information Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Compliant?
If you suspect that your website falls short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will keep you out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into implementing any of the following pages if applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general health or medical content)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the right disclosure information to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets users know that you are not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you may be compensated if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets readers know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors be aware that you have been 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your Website
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (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 directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)
You can then add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website
Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can add these to the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors have access to legal information from every web page …
(Display legal information to visitors on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer in WordPress using widgets here:
Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)
Go here for more info:
Alternatively, you can download a package of website legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages were written 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 add your own details, 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
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as previously described.
Visit this site to learn more:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using cut & paste legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use plugins.
Here are some WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages)
If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you loads of headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to 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.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks when the user agrees to your terms.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear inside your main WordPress dashboard menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)
You can easily create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate websites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site menu)
Select from several 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 for more details about the benefits of using this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites containing over 20 customizable compliance page templates for your digital business …
Learn more 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 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. 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.
More information:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.
We want your site to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal page templates, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate necessary 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 engage in any form of commercial activity online, it’s important that your website is compliant with government legal requirements and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, 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, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
Legal Information
Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:
- Federal Trade Commission 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 – 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
- United States Patent and Trademark Office
- United States Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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
We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site.
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