Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you recommend or use?
As the digital era continues growing at such a rapid pace and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s happening and make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if having a digital presence is an integral aspect of your business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, 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 (BBB). Do a search online for “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 has ramifications for several business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, e.g. PPC advertising
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could reject web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in most advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your business online is not in compliance, you could also face 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 site(s) may be required to comply with various legalities, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you may be endorsing on your site, and that there are easy solutions that can help your sites become compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with the laws governing business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you promote on your website or blog
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider what could happen to your business if the following scenarios were to happen:
- A person suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online workout program.
- The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
- Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you’ll do with the information you’ve collected.
- Someone steals content from your website and puts it up on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website or blog letting your visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you are recommending that you may receive a commission if they decide to purchase through your affiliate link.
- You haven’t spelled out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
- A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are fake and tries to sue you.
- You did not disclose that you received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
- Your site contains adult content and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.
Consider also these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 with warnings or lose access entirely 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 exposed to litigation?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
- Network Marketer
- Affiliate Product Marketer
- AdSense Publisher
- Product Publisher
- Amazon Affiliate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
You need to ensure that your online business has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to all you site users.
Compliance With 3rd-Party Services
Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.
You are obligated to let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will interact with online.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires websites to display certain information when using many of their services or features. This includes using Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue with your site using Google AdSense …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your products or services using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you sell products online through merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages to your website before your products are approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling digital products via ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners for breaches of regulation 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. you should protect your business by making sure that your website complies with FTC regulations and guidelines.
There are many sites that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide a number of references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …
(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)
Don’t Forget Social Media Applications
If you plan to develop apps that will integrate with your website, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …
(Apps for social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)
- If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you are considering promoting anything online via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or using Google AdWords pay-per-click ads 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 - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Compliance Information Does My Website Need To Be Covered Against Legal Compliance Issues?
If your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should help keep you out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and 3rd-party providers, and avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider implementing one or more of the following pages:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- External Linking Policy
- Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general health or medical content)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to media on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
Adding correct disclosure information is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs site users that you are not receiving compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you may benefit financially if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets visitors be aware that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
- Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors 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.
Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you will consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been created, 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 content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder via FTP …
(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)
You can then add links to your pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) so that visitors will be able to access the information from all of your pages …
(Display links to legal pages to users on all of your website’s pages)
We have created a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress using widgets here:
Legal Templates
You can find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms)
More info:
Another option is to download a package of cut & paste website legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your legal pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Pages include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- 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 WordPress page for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your server as previously described.
For more details, go here:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
In addition to using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use plugins.
Here are some great legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you many headaches.
Some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When the user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
- New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear in your WP dashboard section …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)
This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from the admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal pages)
Select from a number of built-in legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In 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
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
total website compliance & disclaimer solution …
Learn more about this plugin here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)
Legal Suite Pro 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 & Conditions
- Earnings Disclaimer
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute 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).
For more information, go here:
If using the services of legal experts to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a lawyer.
We want your website to be protected!
Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal documents, or a plugin - see section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, 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, it’s important that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and any guidelines and terms of service provided by third-party sites that you may be promoting or advertising online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
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, we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
References And Legal Resources
Below is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to comply 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
- Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB
- 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
See Also …
- Google 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 you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress site.
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