One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a business owner is to break the law.
As the digital way of life continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if having an online presence is an important factor in 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 commercial gain, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The new laws affect various business categories, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. text link ads, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook could reject web applications, and you will not be accepted into a range of advertising or online merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could also end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
This guide explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of companies whose products or services you endorse on your website or blog
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Consider for a minute what could happen to your business if these scenarios were to happen:
- A person suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online workout program.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
- You’ve told subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you will do with the details you have collected.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own site.
- You haven’t informed visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you’re selling that you could derive a sales commission if they end up purchasing via your affiliate link.
- You did not spell out the terms of your return policies.
- Visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are false and decide to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your website contains adult information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete his offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a massive $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 prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many internet 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 randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 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 litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
it’s important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You are expected to let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you interact with online.
For example:
Google requires you to display certain information if using their services. This includes using services like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Monetizing your blog with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
Or promoting your services through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information products via companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add various legal pages before your products are approved for selling via their networks …
(Policy requirements product vendors using ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines 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 will reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this often prompts 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 plan to 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. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with FTC regulations.
There are many resources online that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These
If you are planning to create social networking applications that will integrate with your site, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services online via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, 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 have been wondering 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 services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance
If your web site lacks in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following legal pages to your site will help your website stay out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and external providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider adding any of the pages listed below if applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you sell or promote affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general health or medical information)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add the correct types of disclosure pages to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets visitors be aware that you’re not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors be aware that you may benefit financially if they buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets your visitors know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets site users know that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your Website
Ideally, you should consult a lawyer and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend creating a legal directory on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to these pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can add these to the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) so that users have access to the information from all of your pages …
(It’s important to display links to legal information on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer here:
Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
To learn more, go here:
Another option is to download a set of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And 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 business details, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new FTC guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy
- ToS & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.
You can either create a new page on your website for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress Legal Plugins
As well as using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal WordPress plugins that you should check out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If manually setting up legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of 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 – The plugin includes customizable and 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 WordPress page.
- Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information is then 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 WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When a user agrees to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item is added to your navigation menu …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal page types)
Choose from various pre-configured 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 to learn more about using this powerful plugin:
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable compliance templates for your digital presence …
For a detailed review of this 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 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 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. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
To learn more, visit this website:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a legal firm.
We want your site to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal forms, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to easily generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do business online, it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies and any terms of service and guidelines provided by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or offering online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
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 in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
Resources
Below is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet its legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- 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
Also …
- 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 why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your site using inexpensive solutions.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum