Is your WordPress site legal? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you are recommending or offering?
As digital business continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and rules keep changing, it’s absolutely vital that you try to stay informed about what’s happening and make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if having an online presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for material gain, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, 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 to learn more.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of new laws has legal implications for several business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, including Google AdWords
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Bloggers
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your website (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 will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into many advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
In this article, we look at why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and show you simple methods and solutions that will make your WordPress site legally compliant quickly and easily.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice about your website or business. As stated earlier, 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 companies whose products or services you endorse on your website or blog
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- Someone has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives someone an allergic reaction.
- You’ve informed your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you will do with it.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your website or blog making your site visitors aware that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and will derive a commission if they buy it.
- You did not spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims that your testimonials are misleading and tries to sue you.
- You did not disclose that you received a free copy in your product review.
- Your site contains adult-related information and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.
Consider now the following real case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information 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 details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk 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 websites chosen at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 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 exposed to non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdWords User
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
You need to make sure that your online business has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to your site users.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services
Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You must let your site users know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will engage with online.
For example:
Google requires your site to display certain information if using many of their services. This includes using services like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Making money online with your blog with Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
Or promoting your products through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell digital products using places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling digital products through ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – 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 reveals that many business are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute 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 chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your website complies with FTC regulations.
A number of sites provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide links to and additional references to a number of these at the end of this article …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you plan to create apps that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with access to your legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting services or products on your site using affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages 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 need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- 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 interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)
Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site
If your website is falling short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site should help your website stay out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and external service providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into including one or more of these compliance pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general information about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Use Of Media (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you are not being paid for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
- Sample/Review Copy – Explains to site users that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
- Sponsored Post – Lets your readers be aware that you have been compensated in some way to write the content.
- 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Content To Your Site
Ideally, you will consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Web Pages Manually
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 on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(WordPress Menu)
Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your website or blog) so that visitors will be able to access the information from all pages …
(Display links to your legal information to users on all of your site’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu, refer to this tutorial:
Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
Go here for more details:
Alternatively, you can download a package of legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)
These legal templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web 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
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website 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 your legal pages to your web server as previously described.
More information:
Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins
As well as using templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If the idea of setting up legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages instead …
This is not a free plugin, but it’s an 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 benefits of using WP Legal Pages are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to 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 just a few clicks of the mouse.
- Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any other page on your site.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks only when the user agrees to your terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your dashboard section …
(WordPress 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 online uses, such as business websites with products, review websites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)
Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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
To learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence …
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)
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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers 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 less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here for more info:
If using the services of lawyers to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire a legal expert.
We want your site 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 attorney-written legal page templates, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate necessary 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 are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service required by third-party sites that you may decide to promote or advertise online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended 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 provide legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
Legal Resources And References
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- 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 – 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
Also …
- Google 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group