How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

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

As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if having an online presence is a fundamental aspect of your business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau Website)

These laws has consequences for various online business categories, including:

• Any kind of advertising, like pay-per-click advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into various advertising and affiliate marketing networks.

If your online business is not in compliance, you could end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website or blog may be required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be using on your site, and that there are solutions that can help your sites become compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice about your website or business. As stated previously, the aim of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws governing your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you promote

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Consider what the implications to your business would be if the situations below were to occur:

• A customer suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online workout program.
• The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not defined what you will do with it.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their website.
• You have not divulged to your site users that you’re an affiliate for the product you are marketing and will get paid an affiliate commission if they buy it.
• You don’t spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Online visitors claim that your testimonials are misleading and try to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website includes adult-related content and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider also these real 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 details to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to issue everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many 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 independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of 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 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:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

it’s important to make sure that your online business complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.

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

For example:

Google requires websites to display legal information if using many of their products and service. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your site with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

Or promoting your services via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell products online using companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add certain legal pages to your website before your products can be approved for selling via their marketplace …

(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)

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

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.

There are many resources websites for businesses that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

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

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

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

(Apps that interface with social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or using 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 all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.

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

What Compliance Information Does Your Website Need To Be Legally Compliant?

If you suspect that your website lacks in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

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

• About Us
• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

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

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general financial advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (if you provide users with access to media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of web content disclosure is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs readers that you’re not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Informs readers that you may derive some form of financial or similar form of benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate link.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Lets users be aware that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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 Site

Ideally, you should consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Uploading Legal Web 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 server, or have someone upload them for you.

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

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

You can then add links to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu administration …

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from all of your pages …

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

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

• Adding And Configuring Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar Menu

Using Store-Bought Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

More info:

• Find Legal Forms – Legal forms

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

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal pages 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 add your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & 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 pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described earlier.

For more details, go here:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

As well as using copy & paste templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use a plugin.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites and blogs worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If setting up legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

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

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

• Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of 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 mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like any WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress 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 any other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When a 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 WP dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review websites, medical sites, etc …

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

You can also 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 Plugin

Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress sites containing over 20 customizable compliance templates for your online presence …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro 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 Use
• 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. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.

To learn more, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your site to be legally safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), 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)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of 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, we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law pertaining to your business.

Legal Information

Here is a useful list of websites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet its 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
• BBB – 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
• 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

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 methods and resources.

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