Is your website legal? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose services or products you are doing business with?
As digital business continues growing at an overwhelming speed and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s going on and ensure that your site remains compliant, especially if your online presence is an important factor in your overall business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of new laws has ramifications for various online business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If you are not compliant, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
In this article, we look at why it’s important to have a compliant website and present simple and inexpensive methods to make your WordPress website compliant quickly and easily.
Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. As stated previously, the purpose of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing business online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you use on your website or blog
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what could happen to your business if the situations below were to happen:
- Someone has a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users allergic reactions.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you will do with it.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your website letting visitors know that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate that you may receive a financial benefit if visitors decide to purchase via your link.
- You didn’t spell out the terms of your return policies.
- Your visitors claim your testimonials are all fake and decide to sue you as a result.
- You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website publishes adult-related content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider now the real examples of costly compliance breaches below:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he is now required to issue 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 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 Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program whose policies they had violated, 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:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
it’s important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence is fully compliant with the law.
Complying With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Leading online companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need of complying with the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your website complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you will interact with online.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information if using many of their services. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your blogs using Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information products through companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add various legal pages before your products can be approved for selling via their network …
(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC guidelines.
Various online business resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide a number of references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you plan to create applications that integrate with your site, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide access to your legal pages …
(Apps for social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether or not 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 are considering promoting products or services online using affiliate marketing, or generating revenue 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 - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
- If you have been wondering 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 websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Compliance Information Does Your Website Need To Be Safe From Legal Compliance Issues?
If you suspect that your website lacks in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should help you stay out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and external providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above, you may want to look into including any of these compliance pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides content about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the right type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs readers that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and purchase through an affiliate link.
- Sample/Review Copy – Disclosure that informs site users that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to visitors that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your Website
Ideally, you should consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your web server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then easily add links to your legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar (or the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from every page …
(It’s important to display legal pages to visitors on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu here:
Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
Visit this website for more information:
Another option is to download a package of cut and paste website legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect in March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your server as described earlier.
More information:
WordPress Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using templates, you can keep things really simple using a plugin.
Here are some plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages like any WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks only when user agrees to your terms.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear inside your main navigation area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view your legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)
With WP Legal Pages, you have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)
Select from various built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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 about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Learn We have written a detailed review of this plugin here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(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 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 one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).
For more details, go here:
If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a legal form or lawyer.
We want your website 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 attorney-prepared legal documentation, or a 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 we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is compliant with all government regulations and the terms of service and guidelines for 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or selling online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumers, 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, we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Additional Legal Information
Below is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply and meet 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 – BBB
- 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
- 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your site.
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com