Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are using or endorsing?
As digital business continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important to stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if having an online presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for commercial gain, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also called the 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)
The new laws has ramifications for several business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, including Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in many advertising or online marketing networks.
If your website 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 help make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern online business practices, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be using online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. As stated previously, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern business online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you recommend on your website or blog
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Is your business at risk? Consider for one minute what could happen to your business if these situations were to take place:
- A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives people skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you plan to do with their details.
- Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
- You have not divulged to your site users that you’re an affiliate for the product you are marketing and will derive an affiliate commission if visitors buy it.
- You have not spelled out the conditions of your return policies.
- A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are fake and decides to sue you as a result.
- You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site publishes adult content and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underage persons.
Consider now these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation 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 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 becoming a target of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
All the leading online companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of service providers.
You are obligated to let your site visitors know that your business complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will do business with.
For example:
Google requires you to display legal information when using their services and product features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your site with Google AdSense display advertising …
(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell information products with companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines 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 sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often results in 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 kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take 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 and guidelines.
A number of online resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide links to resources to a number of these at the end of this article …
(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you plan to create apps that integrate with your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others require you to provide information about your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure as to whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online using affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, 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 shut down.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)
What Compliance Pages Does My Website Need To Be Safe From Legal Compliance Issues?
If your website is lacking in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following legal pages to your site should keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider implementing any of these compliance pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general health or medical advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to download media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the correct types of disclosure pages to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you will not receive compensation for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and purchase through one of your affiliate links.
- Sample Or review Copy – Discloses to users that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets users know that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legal directory to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory via FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)
You can then add a link to your pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to legal pages on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer in WordPress using widgets here:
Use Ready-Made Templates
You can easily find attorney-prepared downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
For more information, go here:
Alternatively, you can download a package of cut and paste legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- Terms of Service (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 WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your server as described earlier.
Visit this website to learn more:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you time.
Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:
- Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any other page on your site.
- Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks only when the user agrees to your legal terms.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear inside your navigation menu …
(WP Legal Pages – Menu)
This allows you to create, view and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate sites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)
You can also choose from several pre-written legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 using this WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users that contains over twenty customizable legal page templates for your site …
Learn more 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 & Conditions
- 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. 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 the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here to learn more:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional legal services.
We want your website to be legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal forms, or a plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service required by 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect the rights of 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 cannot provide legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
References And Legal Resources
Here is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what your site may require to remain compliant and meet legal obligations:
- 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
- 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
In Addition …
- 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
- Google AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
- ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
- Facebook Platform Policies
We hope this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website using simple methods and 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