Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you promote or use?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to try and stay informed about what’s going on and ensure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if having a digital presence plays a significant role in your overall business strategy.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites 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 departments, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.
(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
These laws affect various online business activities, including:
- Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords or AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creators
- Bloggers
- etc.
If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you will not be allowed to enrol in a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
This article explains the importance of having a legally compliant website and how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website.
Is Your Website Breaking The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Is your business at risk? Consider what would happen to your business if any of the situations below were to occur:
- A person has a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you will do with their details.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their website.
- You did not tell your visitors that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate that you will earn an affiliate commission if visitors buy it.
- You have not spelled out the terms of your return policies.
- Visitors claim the testimonials on your site are false and try to sue you.
- You did not disclose that you have received a free copy in a product review.
- Your site includes adult content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.
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 details to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $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 prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least 2 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 with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Product Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- EBay Seller
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online
It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business is fully compliant with the law.
Complying With Third-Party Services
Big companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.
You must let your visitors know that your business complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you engage with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires your site to display legal information when using many of their products or service. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Making money online with your blog using Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)
And even promoting your services through Google AdWords …
(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)
If you sell information-based products with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their marketplace …
(Policy requirements digital product vendors using ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners for breaches of regulation 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 does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your website is compliant with all FTC guidelines.
Many online business resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references to some of these at the end of this article …
(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to develop social networking applications that will integrate with your website, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others will require you to provide access to your legal pages …
(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)
- If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website
If you suspect that your web site lacks in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site should help you keep out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues):
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer Pages
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
As well as the pages above, you may want to consider including any of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Agreement (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 or blog provides advice about health or medical areas)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Audio/Video Terms (if you provide users with access to downloadable media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
Adding correct disclosure information to your site is important. For example:
- No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the post.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs site users that you may be compensated if they buy through your affiliate links.
- Review/Sample Copy – Explains to users that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service.
- Sponsored Post – Discloses to visitors that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
- 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
How To Add Legal Content To Your WordPress Site
Ideally, you should consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Upload Legal Pages To Your Site
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 directory on 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 easily add a link to your legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …
(WordPress Menu)
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) so that visitors will be able to access legal information from every web page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal pages on all of your site’s pages)
For a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Use Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to websites like this one:
Find Legal Forms
More info:
Another option is to purchase a package of cut & paste website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates)
Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your web pages.
The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer
- DMCA Compliance
- FTC Compliance
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.
You can either create a new WordPress 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 web server as described previously.
More info:
Legal Page Plugins
As well as using legal templates, you can keep things very simple using a plugin.
Here are some legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin)
If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably low-priced 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.
Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin are:
- Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
- Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
- Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like any WP page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When the user agrees to the legal terms, the page unlocks.
- Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your main navigation section …
(WP Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)
This allows you to view, create and edit legal pages from your admin area …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate sites, medical sites, etc …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)
You can also choose from several pre-written legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here:
Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over 20 customizable legal templates for your online business …
Learn more about this plugin here:
Legal Suite Pro
(Legal Suite Pro)
Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 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 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 license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Go here for more info:
If hiring lawyers to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your website until you can afford to hire a legal expert.
We want your website to be safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or a plugin as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, 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 commercial activity online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with all government laws and regulations and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or advertise online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, 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 provide legal advice here. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
Additional Resources
Below is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to comply and meet its 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
- 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
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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group