Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you are endorsing or advertising?
As the internet continues growing at such a fast pace and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s happening and make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if having an online presence plays a significant role in your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)
The new laws has legal consequences for various business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, like Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- 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 like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces 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 enrol in many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website or blog(s) are subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be offering online, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress users that can help your websites become compliant, such as the tools listed further below.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:
- Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
- The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
- You’ve told subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you will do with it.
- Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website or blog letting your site visitors know that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate that you will derive a sales commission if they buy it.
- You have not spelled out the conditions of your refund policies.
- Your visitors claim your testimonials are all fake and decide to sue you because of it.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
- Your website includes adult content and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider too these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- 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. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $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 prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 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 violation of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could easily become exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s vitally important to make sure that your website or blog complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.
Big companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.
You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you will do business with.
For example:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using many of their services and product features. This includes using features like Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Making money online with your blog using Google AdSense ads …
(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)
Or promoting your business through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell digital products with companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale in their marketplace …
(Policy requirements for selling digital products via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines and regulations.
A number of business resources provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop applications that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about various legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting services or products online via affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon 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 suspended.
- If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to 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)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance
If you suspect that your web site is falling short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help your business stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and third-party providers, and even help you avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the above, you may want to consider implementing any of the following pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog 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)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add the right disclosures to your site. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you will not receive for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your readers be aware that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets visitors be aware that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets readers 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you will consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …
(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to these pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your website) to ensure that users have access to legal information from every page …
(Display links to legal pages to users on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer menu here:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
To learn more, visit this site:
Alternatively, you can download a package of cut and paste website legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
These legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use: includes 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 to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as previously described.
For more details, go here:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using copy & paste templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal WordPress plugins you should check out:
WP Legal Pages
(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your website a lot easier and save you a great deal of time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:
- Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
- Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully 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 legal pages just like every other WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when published.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When a user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your main navigation menu section …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)
You can also select from various built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites containing over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your online business …
Learn more here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(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 of Use
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro – 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. 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 websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here for more info:
If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.
We want your business to be legally protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or use online. Your website must comply with a wide range of laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not even be aware of.
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?
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law pertaining to your business.
Additional Resources
Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to comply and meet its legal obligations:
- FTC 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 – 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
Additionally …
- 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
- Google 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 compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website.
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