How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

As a business owner, you do not want to suddenly discover that you have been operating on the wrong side of the law.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes products or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not protect 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 promote anything on your site for profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau)

The introduction of these new laws has legal ramifications for various business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, including contextual advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you will not be allowed into a number of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

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

The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website(s) are subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern business practices online, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be endorsing online, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your online properties become more compliant, such as the plugins that we list further below.

Does Your Website Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice about your website or business. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider for a minute what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users allergic reactions.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you will do with the information you have collected.
• Someone copies content from your site and publishes it on their site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog telling your visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you are marketing that you could derive a commission if visitors buy it.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your return policies.
• A visitor claims that your testimonials are all fake and decides to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed that you received a free copy of a product you reviewed.
• Your website publishes adult-related content and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider now these real examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to issue everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• 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 private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 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 breach of at least 2 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 notices or lose access to the Google program whose policies they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming a target of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

It’s imperative to ensure that your digital presence is fully compliant with the law.

Complying With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

All of the leading websites and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you do business with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your site using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

And even promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell information products with companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements product vendors selling via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially if you plan to sell or promote products online with the aid of product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, 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 money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.

There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. See the references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you plan to develop social networking applications that integrate with your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything on your site via affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your website 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 - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have 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 websites require you to comply with their terms of use)

Essential Legal Pages To Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of these legal pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides health or medical content)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding correct disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets your visitors know that you will not receive any kind of payment for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Informs your readers that you will benefit financially if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample Or review Copy – Discloses to visitors that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs users that you were compensated in some form 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your Site

Ideally, you should consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Site

If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend creating a legals folder on your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages via FTP)

You can then easily add links to your legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu administration …

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from all of your pages …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer here:

• How To Use Widgets

Store-Bought Legal Templates

You can easily find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

To learn more, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to purchase a set of website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages)

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

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s 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: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

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

More info:

• Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using cut & paste templates, you can keep things very simple using a plugin.

Here are some plugins for WordPress-powered websites and blogs you may be interested in checking out:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually setting up legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

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

Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• 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 – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like any page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your terms.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear inside your main dashboard section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

With WP Legal Pages, you can create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, medical sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)

You can also choose from various built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …

Go here to learn more about this plugin:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin 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 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 this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider at least implementing some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford a lawyer.

We want your site to be legally protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal content, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to 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 we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or use online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole range of regulations, some 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.

Resources

Here is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your website 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
• 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

Plus …

• 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 why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

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