Is your WordPress site legal? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you are promoting or selling?
As digital business continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and rules constantly change, it’s absolutely essential that you try to stay informed about what’s going on and make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence plays a significant part in your overall business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site 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 Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws affect several online business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, e.g. contextual advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in most advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website(s) may be subject to legal requirements, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be recommending on your site, and that there are solutions that can help your online properties become compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based in.
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what would happen to your business if these situations were to happen:
- A user has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate marketer gives people an allergic reaction.
- You’ve told subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you will do with their personal details.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their site.
- You haven’t advised your visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re recommending and will earn a financial benefit if they purchase it.
- You don’t spell out the terms of your refund or return policies.
- Your visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are fake and try to sue you.
- You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy in your product review.
- Your website publishes adult-related information and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider also the following real examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete an offer they were promoting. 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 private information 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 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how a business owner can easily become exposed to the risk of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
it’s important to make sure that your website is legally compliant.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You are obligated to let your site users know that your business complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you interact with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires you to display certain information if using their services. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Making money online with your sites with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)
And even promoting your site through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell digital products using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages to your website before your products are approved for sale in their marketplace …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any kind of business 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 complies with all FTC regulations.
Various sites provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you plan to create social networking applications that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your website 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 to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- 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)
What Legal Information Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Protected From Legal Compliance Issues?
If you suspect that your website falls short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following legal pages to your site will help you stay out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into implementing any of these compliance pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general content about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Use Of Media (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding correct disclosure information to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets visitors be aware that you are not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you may benefit financially if they purchase through your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Informs users that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to readers that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
- 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your Website
Ideally, you will 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 Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal directory on your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can insert these into the WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your website) so that users can access the information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu using widgets here:
Using Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
Go here to learn more:
Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut and paste website legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)
These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
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 these to your web server as described previously.
Visit this site to learn more:
Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some great WordPress plugins you should check out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider using WP Legal Pages …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you many headaches.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:
- Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WP page.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. 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 menu item is added to your WordPress dashboard menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, niche sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)
You can also select from several built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Built-In 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 this website to learn more this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
The Compliance Bar WordPress Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business …
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)
Legal Suite Pro 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 powered site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Visit this site for more information:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your website to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal templates, or a legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, it’s important that your site stays compliant with all government regulations and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or advertising online. Your digital presence must comply with a number of laws and regulatory guidelines, 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 the law wherever your business is based.
Legal Information
Here is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site 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
- 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
- US Copyright Office
Plus …
- 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
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 provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website using simple methods and resources.
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