Is your WordPress site legal? Do you know if your site is breaking any rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you recommend or advertise?
Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these new laws has legal consequences for various online business categories, including:
- Any form of advertising, including text link advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook will reject web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote various advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
In this guide, we discuss why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and provide simple and inexpensive methods and solutions that will help make your WordPress website compliant quickly and easily.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider for a minute what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- Someone suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness program.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users an adverse reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you’ll do with the details you have collected.
- Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your website making your site visitors aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you are endorsing and will derive an affiliate commission if they buy it via your link.
- You did not spell out the conditions of your return policies.
- Someone claims the testimonials on your site are fake and decides to sue you.
- You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
- Your site includes adult content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider also these real case studies 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 his offer. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $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 marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars 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 infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken 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 cautions 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 exposed to non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Info Product Marketer
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
- Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online
It’s imperative to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies
Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You are expected to let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you engage with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires websites to display certain information if using many of their services or product features. This includes Google Analytics …
(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)
Earning revenue online with your WordPress site with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information products with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add various legal pages before your products are approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially if you plan to sell products and services with the aid of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant
New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners 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 by ensuring that your site complies with FTC guidelines.
There are many resources online that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the additional references and 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)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you plan to develop applications that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with information about various legal pages …
(Social networking apps also require compliance)
- If you are unsure whether you are 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 plan to promote services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or use 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 include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies)
Basic Legal Pages To Include In Your Site
If your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external service providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (if your website provides health or medical information)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Use Of Media (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the right disclosure information to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Discloses to readers that you are not receiving any type of compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you will benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Lets visitors be aware that you have received a sample or review copy of the product you’re reviewing by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets users be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets your visitors know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Website
Ideally, you should have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Pages To Your Website
If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you in standard web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your web server, or have someone upload these pages for you.
We recommend adding a legal folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then add a link to these legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your site) so that visitors have access to the information from every web page …
(Display links to your legal pages on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your WordPress sidebar and footer here:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)
Go here for more info:
Alternatively, you can download a set of legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new page 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 described earlier.
Go here for more details:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using cut & paste templates, you can keep things very simple by using WordPress plugins.
Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites that you should check out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If creating legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages:
- 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 a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin 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 page on your site.
- Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other page on your site.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When users agree to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear inside your dashboard area …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)
You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site menu)
Choose from various built-in legal templates …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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
For more information about the benefits of using this handy plugin, visit this website:
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over 20 customizable compliance pages for your website …
Go here to learn more about this 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 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 license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.
Go here for more information:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal page templates, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.
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As stated earlier, if you do business online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by 3rd-party products and services that you may be promoting or selling online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
References And Resources
Below is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your website may require to remain compliant 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 – BBB
- 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
- United States Copyright Office
Also …
- Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
- Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
- 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
We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add essential legal pages to your site using inexpensive legal resources and solutions.
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