Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you are using or endorsing?
As digital business continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your website remains legal, especially if having a digital presence plays an important part in your overall business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for commercial gain, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these new laws affect several online business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. pay-per-click advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in a number of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website or blog(s) are required to comply with legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern online business practices, the importance of complying with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be advertising online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become fully compliant, such as the tools that we discuss further below.
Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern business online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you recommend on your website
Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important
Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A person suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer 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 informed them what you plan to do with it.
- Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own website.
- There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you are recommending a product as an affiliate that you will derive a commission if they buy it.
- You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
- A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are false and decides 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 site contains adult content and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.
Consider also these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
- A social networking app developer received 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 information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it 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 websites chosen at random, more than 90% had infringed 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% had infringed 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 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 targeted for litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Info Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service
It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.
Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies
Compliance with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You are obligated to let your site visitors know that your website complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will do business with online.
For example:
Google requires your site to display legal information if using their products. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue online with your online properties with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense policy requirements)
And even promoting your site via Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell information-based products via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will be required to add certain legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …
(ClickBank – policy requirements)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to add clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies 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 does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
You can find many resources online that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide references to a number of these at the end of this article …
(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements
If you plan to create social networking applications for your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about various legal pages …
(Facebook 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 sites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote products or services online using affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, 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 shut down.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website
If your website is falling short in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
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 help to avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into including any of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Linking Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides advice about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms (if you allow media downloads on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the right disclosure information to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs site users that you are not being paid for writing the article.
- Affiliate Links – Lets your readers be aware that you will receive compensation if they purchase through affiliate links on your site.
- Sample Or review Copy – Lets your visitors be aware that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Informs your visitors that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Lets users 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.
How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website
Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Uploading Legal Pages Manually
If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder via FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)
You can then add a link to these pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that users can access the information from every web page …
(Display links to legal information on all of your site’s pages)
We have written a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu here:
Legal Templates
You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable internet forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like the ones listed below:
Find Legal Forms
(Find Legal Forms)
For more information, go here:
Another option is to download a package of cut & paste website legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)
These templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described earlier.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using legal templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.
Here are some plugins for WordPress-powered sites that you should check out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider using WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you 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 page 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 just a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other page on your website.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you 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 lock down. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your navigation menu …
(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you view, create and edit your legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)
You can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)
Choose from a number of pre-written legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Built-In 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
Go here to learn more about using this great plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence …
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Legal Suite Pro
(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 powered 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 the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
For more details, go here:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some type of legal protection on your website until you can afford a lawyer.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, 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 are planning to), you need to make sure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service for third-party sites that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole set of regulations, many of which you may not 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, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on our website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
Resources
Below is a useful list of websites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:
- FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- FTC 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
Plus …
- 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 why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)