How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

As a business owner, the last thing you want is to learn the hard way that you have broken laws, rules or regulations.

Online laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t protect someone from taking legal action against your business.

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

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws has legal implications for several business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, including Google AdWords or AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

Without certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a number of advertising and online merchant networks.

If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

This guide explains the importance of having a compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website.

Does Your Site Comply With The Law?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all laws wherever your business is located.

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider what could happen to your business if any of the scenarios below were to take place:

• A customer has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link skin rashes.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you will do with their details.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting your visitors know that you are marketing a product as an affiliate that you will earn financial benefits if visitors decide to buy through your link.
• You don’t spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Someone claims that your testimonials are fake and decides to sue you because of it.
• You did not disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your website contains adult information and you have not taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider too the actual case studies of costly compliance breaches below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information (including credit card info to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’re now required to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with 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 prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars 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% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two 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 entirely to the Google program whose policies they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to become exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog remains fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services

Big companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.

You must let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires your site to display certain information if using their products. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Earning revenue with your online properties using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense online advertising policy requirements)

Or promoting your site via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell products online using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(Policy requirements for selling products via ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and statements on your site, especially concerning the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC guidelines.

Many sites provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to resources at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you plan to create applications that will integrate with 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 not sure whether 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 plan to promote anything online using affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, 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 are required to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have ever wondered 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 third-party websites require you to comply with their policies)

What Legal Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Compliant?

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

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and third-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

Additionally, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the following pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general content about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

It’s important to add the right disclosures to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not receive any kind of compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to your visitors that you will benefit financially if they buy through your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets your readers know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to readers that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with 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 Content To Your WordPress Website

Ideally, you will have your lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once this has been completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

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

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

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can add these to the WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your site) to ensure that users have access to the information from all your pages …

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

If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To Your Website

Use Store-Bought Templates

You can easily find attorney-prepared downloadable internet forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

Go here to learn more:

• FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of website legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms)

These legal pages were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: includes inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

You can either create a new page for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as previously described.

Visit this site to learn more:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use a plugin.

Here are some plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WP Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your website seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you time.

Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to 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 around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed when user agrees to your terms.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your main dashboard area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

You can easily create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

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

Choose from several built-in legal templates …

(WordPress 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

To learn more this handy plugin, visit this website:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …

Learn We have written a detailed review of this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(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 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 flexible, allowing 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:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of legal experts 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 legal services.

We want your site to be legally safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any type of business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) for third-party sites that you may decide to promote or endorse online. Your digital presence must comply with a wide range of regulations, many of which you may not even 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 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 regarding your specific business.

Legal Resources & References

Here is a useful list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• Federal Trade Commission 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

Also …

• 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

We hope 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 all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

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