How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you are doing business with?

Internet laws and regulations were designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, then you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, 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 to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws affect several online business activities, including:

• Any kind of advertising, like Google AdWords or AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook will suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in various advertising and online merchant networks.

Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.

In this guide, we discuss why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and provide simple and cost-effective methods that will make your website or blog legally compliant in minutes.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations concerning your specific business.

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• Someone suffers a heart attack after they use your online workout program.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate gives someone allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing prospective subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you’ll do with their details.
• Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you are an affiliate for the product you’re marketing that you may derive a financial benefit if they buy through your affiliate link.
• You didn’t spell out the terms of your return policies.
• Online visitors claim that your testimonials are all fake and decide to sue you.
• You did not disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site includes adult information and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider also the actual case studies of costly compliance breaches described:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk 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 picked at random, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 notices or lose access to the Google program they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming exposed to litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords User
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

It’s imperative to ensure that your website or blog complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

Compliance with third-party companies terms and policies is important.

You are obligated to let your site visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with.

For example:

Google requires your site to display certain information if using their services. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Earning revenue with your website using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

And even promoting your business using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information-based products through merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add legal pages before your products are approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for vendors selling through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically results in 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 any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website is compliant with FTC guidelines.

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 …

(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you plan to create social networking applications for your site, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether you are 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 products or services on your site via affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you have ever wondered 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 third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site

If your website is lacking in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help your site keep out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and 3rd-party providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

• About Us Page
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into including any of these pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right disclosure information to your site is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets your visitors know that you will not receive compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you will receive compensation if they buy through your affiliate link.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets readers know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to users 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 comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you should consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend adding a legals directory to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

You can then easily add links to these pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from all of your site’s pages …

(Display links to legal pages to users on all of your site’s pages)

We have written a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer using widgets here:

• Using Widgets

Legal Templates

You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to websites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

Go here for more details:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to download a set of legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)

These templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your legal pages.

The legal forms 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
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new WordPress page for each legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as described earlier.

Go here for more information:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using templates, you can simplify things by using a plugin.

Here are some great plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages)

If the idea of creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages instead …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you time.

Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks only when the user agrees to your terms.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear inside your WP dashboard area …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

This allows you to view, create and edit legal pages from the admin area …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate websites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page type drop down menu)

Choose from several built-in legal templates …

(WP 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

To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin

complete website compliance & disclaimer solution …

Learn more here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

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 & Conditions
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro 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 the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

To learn more, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire the services of a solicitor.

We want your site to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator lets you easily generate basic 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 engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service and guidelines provided by 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or endorse online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended 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 do not offer legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.

Additional Legal Information

Here is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet legal obligations:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Better Business Bureau – 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
• United States 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
• 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 provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website using simple and inexpensive methods and solutions.

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