Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you are advertising or recommending?
As the digital era continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and ensure that your site remains legal, especially if your online presence plays an important role in your overall business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of new laws has consequences for various online business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, including Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Blogging
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could reject web applications, and you will not be allowed to enroll in a range of advertising and online marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
In this guide, we discuss the importance of having a compliant website and describe simple methods and solutions that will help make your WordPress website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice on this website. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose services or products you offer
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider for a moment what the implications to your business would be if these situations were to occur:
- Someone suffers a heart attack after using your online workout program.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you’ll do with their personal details.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their site.
- There is no statement on your website telling your visitors that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you may get paid a sales commission if they purchase it.
- You did not spell out the terms of your return policies.
- Visitors claim your testimonials are misleading and try to sue you.
- You did not disclose that you have received a free copy in a product review.
- Your website contains adult-related information and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.
Consider now these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card information to complete his offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’re now required to issue 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 without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it 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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least two 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 with warnings or lose access entirely to the Google program with the infringement, 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 non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdWords User
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
You need to make sure that your digital presence stays fully compliant with the law.
Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
Complying with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.
You are expected to let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will interact with.
For example:
Google requires websites to display legal information when using many of their products and service. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Monetizing your websites with Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your site via Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell products online using companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will be required to add various legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling products via ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your site complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.
Various sites provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you are planning to create social networking applications for your site users, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to various legal pages …
(Apps for social networking sites also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting services or products on your site via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or using Google AdWords pay-per-click ads 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 their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Compliance Information Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Compliant?
If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
Adding the following legal pages to your site will help keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and third-party providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into including one or more of the following pages:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general content about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information to your website is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Lets users know that you are not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Informs visitors that you will derive some form of financial or similar type of benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
- Sample/Review Copy – Informs visitors that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
- 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Compliance Pages To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you should consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal directory in your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)
You can then add a link to your legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …
(WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can insert these into the WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your website) to ensure that users can access the information from every web page …
(Display links to legal information on all of your site’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar using widgets, refer to this tutorial:
Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
Go here for more info:
Another option is to download a package of website legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
- Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as previously described.
For more details, go here:
WordPress Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things very simple using a plugin.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users that you may be interested in checking out:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If the idea of manually setting up legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WP 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 make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you time.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your website.
- Shortcodes – You can 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 WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when the user agrees to your legal terms.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your navigation area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, AdSense sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)
Choose from several pre-written legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Built-In 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 this handy plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)
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 And 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 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 license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).
More information:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.
We want your website to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal content, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate basic 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 do any kind of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website complies with government regulations and the guidelines and terms of service for third-party services and products that you may be promoting or using online. If your website doesn’t comply 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, we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.
Additional Legal Information
Below is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to comply and meet 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
- 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
And …
- Google 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 this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your site using simple legal resources and solutions.
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