How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a business owner is to break the law.

As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s absolutely vital to try and stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if having an online presence plays an important part in your business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines 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 for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws affect various online business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, e.g. inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your site 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, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into various advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

If your online business is not compliant, you could also face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your site(s) may be subject to legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be offering on your site, and that there are easy solutions that can help your sites become fully compliant, such as the tools listed further below.

Is Your Website Legally Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. 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 pertaining to your business.

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

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

• A user has a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you will do with it.
• Someone steals content from your site and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting your site visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you’re selling that you may earn a commission if they decide to buy through your link.
• You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
• Visitors claim that your testimonials are false and try to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site publishes adult information and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.

Consider also these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• 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 independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 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 becoming exposed to non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

It’s vitally important to ensure that your website is fully compliant with the law.

Complying With Third-Party Services Terms And Policies

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

You must let your site users know that your business complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you engage with.

For example:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Monetizing your blog with Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

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

(Policy requirements for vendors selling via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

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 will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your website complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.

Various online resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

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

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products online via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you have been wondering 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, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

Basic Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site

If your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

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

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

In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider adding one or more of these 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 provides advice about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the correct type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Discloses to users that you will not receive compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets your readers be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Informs readers that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
• 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 Compliance Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this, 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 HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

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

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that users will be able to access legal information from every page …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar menu or footer in WordPress using widgets here:

• Using Widgets In WordPress

Store-Bought Legal Templates

You can find attorney-prepared downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut and paste website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & 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 the pages to your server as described earlier.

More info:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

As well as using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use plugins.

Here are some legal WordPress plugins you should check out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you many headaches.

Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks only when users agree to your terms.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear inside your dashboard area …

(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

This lets you view, create and edit your legal pages from your admin area …

(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal pages)

Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – 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

To learn more about this plugin, visit this site:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin

complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …

Go here to learn more about this plugin:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 Use
• 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers 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 one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.

Go here for more info:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your website to be protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal content, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including ToS, 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 (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and any terms of service and guidelines of third-party sites that you may be promoting or advertising online. Your website or blog must comply with various laws and regulatory guidelines, 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert 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 sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your site may require to comply 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 – 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

In Addition …

• 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
• 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 presented above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website or blog using simple methods and resources.

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