Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you endorse or use?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s going on and ensure that your website remains compliant, especially if having an online presence plays an important part in your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection 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 for more details.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these laws has ramifications for various online business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords
- 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 statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into various advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
In this article, we discuss the importance of having a compliant website and explain simple methods and solutions that will make your WordPress website or blog legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. As previously stated, the purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing business practices online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party companies whose products or services you promote on your website
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider for a moment what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A user suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives people an adverse reaction.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you plan to do with the details you’ve collected.
- Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog letting visitors know that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you may receive financial benefits if they buy it.
- You did not spell out the terms of your refund or return policies.
- A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are false and decides to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed that you received a free copy of a product you reviewed.
- Your site includes adult-related content and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.
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 to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to give everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — 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 gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 with warnings or lose access to the Google program they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could easily become exposed to the risk of litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
it’s important to ensure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and information accessible to your site visitors.
Compliance With Third-Party Services
All the leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade in many countries emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will interact with online.
For example:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using their products. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Monetizing your site using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your business through Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell products online using companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …
(Policy requirements for vendors selling via ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already 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 selling 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 ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations.
Various online business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you are planning to develop apps that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your site 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’ve been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site
If you suspect that your website is lacking in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website should keep you out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and external service providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into implementing one or more of these pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding the correct type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs site users that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Discloses to site users that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Explains to site users that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Informs your visitors that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legals folder in your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu administration …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or the footer of your website) to ensure that users will be able to access legal information from all your web pages …
(It’s important to display legal information to users on all of your website’s pages)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
For more details, visit this site:
Alternatively, you can download a set of legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page on your website 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 your legal pages to your web server as described earlier.
More info:
WordPress Legal Plugins
As well as using copy & paste templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some plugins for WordPress websites and blogs that you should check out:
WP Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …
WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time and effort.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like every other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your 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 WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page lock down. When users agree to the legal terms, the page unlocks.
- Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your navigation area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site dropdown menu)
Select from several pre-configured legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – 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
For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
complete website compliance & disclaimer solution …
To learn more about the plugin go here:
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 – 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 site. Your legal pages can be 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 or flip).
For more information, go here:
If hiring legal experts to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance from a legal expert.
We want your site to be legally 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 ready-made legal forms, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online, it’s important that your website complies with regulatory agencies and any terms of service and guidelines for 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole range of regulations, many of which you may not even 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 are not offering legal advice on this website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your specific business.
Additional Information
Here is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
- FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
- BBB – 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
And …
- 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 compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add legal pages to your site using inexpensive resources and solutions.
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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