Is your WordPress site legal? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you endorse or advertise?
Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the (US based) Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws affect various business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, like inline ads, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in a number of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website or blog may be subject to legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be selling online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your sites become more compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations wherever you do business.
Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be if these scenarios were to occur:
- A person has a cardiac arrest after they use your online workout program.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people skin rashes.
- Your opt-in list provides a statement that lets subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you’ll do with their personal details.
- Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their own website.
- You did not tell your site users that you’re an affiliate for the product you are promoting that you may earn a commission if visitors buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the conditions of your refund policies.
- Someone claims that your testimonials are fake and tries to sue you.
- You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy of the product you reviewed.
- Your site publishes adult information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
Consider too the documented examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction 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 prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of at least three 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 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 a target of non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s imperative to ensure that your website remains 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 expected to let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will do business with online.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using their services and features. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Generating revenue with your blogs using Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell digital products using companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …
(ClickBank – policy requirements for sellers)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often ends up with 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 selling 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 website complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
Many business resources provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide references and links to useful resources to a number of these at the end of this article …
(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you are planning to create applications for your site, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Apps that interface with social networks also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote anything online using affiliate marketing, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, 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 to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Legal Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Safe From Legal Compliance Issues?
If your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should help your site stay out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to consider implementing any of the following pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add correct disclosures to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets visitors know that you will not be receiving any form of payment for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets visitors know that you will benefit financially if they buy through your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Informs readers that you have received a review or sample copy of the product by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets visitors know that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
- 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.
Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legals folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can insert these into the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that users have access to legal information from all your pages …
(Display links to legal pages on all of your website’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your WordPress sidebar or footer using widgets here:
Legal Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
Go here for more details:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of website legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates 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 page for every 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 web server as described previously.
For more details, go here:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using templates, you can keep things really simple using WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites that you may be interested in using:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you time.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any other page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your legal terms.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your main navigation menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)
With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, medical sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page type menu)
You can also select from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Built-In 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 this plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin containing over 20 customizable compliance templates for your website …
Learn more here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(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 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 or flip).
For more information, go here:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance from a solicitor.
We want your business to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documents, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily 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 stated earlier, if you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website remains compliant with all legal requirements and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or endorse online. Your internet presence must comply with a whole range of regulations, some of which you may not even 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice on this website. 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 the law in your country or region.
References And Resources
Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to stay compliant and meet its 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
- 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
Additionally …
- 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 you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your site.
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