How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

If you plan to grow a successful business online, you do not want to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

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

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau Website)

These laws affect various online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, including Google AdWords or AdSense
• 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 statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote various advertising and online merchant networks.

You may 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) may be subject to legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be endorsing online, and that there are solutions that can help your websites become more compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all laws wherever your business is based in.

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider for one minute what would happen to your business if the following were to occur:

• A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives someone allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you will do with the details you’ve collected.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog telling visitors that you’re an affiliate for the product you are selling that you will get paid financial benefits if they decide to purchase via your link.
• You have not spelled out the terms of your refund policies.
• Someone claims the testimonials on your site are all fake and decides to sue you.
• You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website includes adult-related content and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider too the documented examples of costly compliance breaches below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card details to complete an offer they were promoting. 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 children’s private details.
• 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, resulting thousands of $$$ 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 in violation of 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 infringed 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 to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, 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:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords Advertiser
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

it’s important to ensure that your website stays fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

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

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your business complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you interact with.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires websites to display legal information when using many of their services and features. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your websites using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

And even promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information products through places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling products via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially when using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC guidelines.

There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See our additional references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

If you plan to develop applications that will integrate with your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …

(Social networking apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything on your site via affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide 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 if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If your website lacks in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website will help keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory authorities and third-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above pages, you may want to consider implementing any of the pages listed below where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general health or medical information)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Audio/Video Terms (if you provide users with access to download videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you will not receive for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you may receive compensation if they buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets site users know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets site users know that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you will consult a lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site

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

We recommend creating a legal folder on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder via FTP …

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

You can then easily add a link to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu feature …

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) so that users have access to the information from every page …

(It’s important to display links to legal pages on all of your website’s pages)

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

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Website

Use Legal Templates

You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

Go here for more info:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut & paste website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Forms)

Cut & Paste website legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your legal web pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC regulations and guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new WordPress page for each 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.

More info:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates

Legal Page Plugins

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

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites and blogs that you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If manually setting up legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site much easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.

Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin are:

• Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other page on your website.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when users agree to your terms.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear in your WP dashboard section …

(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

With WP Legal Pages, you have the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, review websites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal page types)

Select from several built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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 this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your site …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 – 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 less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.

To learn more, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring lawyers to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your website to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documents, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you quickly generate necessary 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, you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service required by 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or sell online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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 provide no legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.

References And Legal Resources

Here is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your website may require to stay compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• 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

See Also …

• 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

We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add legal pages to your site.

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