Is your WordPress website 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 are doing business with?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important to try and stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if having an online presence is important in the success of your business strategy.
New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.
(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)
The introduction of these laws affect several business categories, including:
- Any type of advertising, including Google AdSense
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketers
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote various advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
This article explains why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and cost-effective solutions.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice on this website. As previously stated, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you endorse on your website or blog
The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant
Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:
- A user has a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
- The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people skin rashes.
- You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you will do with their details.
- Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own site.
- There is no statement on your website letting your site visitors know that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and will get paid a commission if they end up buying through your affiliate link.
- You did not spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
- Someone claims that your testimonials are all fake and decides to sue you.
- You did not disclose that you were given a free copy of the product you reviewed.
- Your website publishes adult content and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underaged persons 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 personal information to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone he does 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 children’s private information.
- Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of 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 with warnings or lose access to the Google program whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).
Can you see how you could easily become exposed to the risks of litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- MLM Networker
- Affiliate Marketer
- AdWords Advertiser
- Product Marketer
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Adult Content Publisher
- Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
it’s important to ensure that your online business remains fully compliant with the law.
Complying With 3rd-Party Companies
Compliance with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.
You are obligated to let your site users know that your business complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you engage with.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Google requires you to display legal information if using many of their products and service. This includes Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Earning revenue online with your online properties with Google AdSense advertising …
(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)
Or promoting your products using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell products online via places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add certain legal pages to your website before your products can be approved for sale …
(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)
The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …
(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your site complies with FTC guidelines.
There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources to a number of these at the end of this article …
(You must word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance
If you plan to develop applications that integrate with your site, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide access to your legal pages …
(Facebook apps also require compliance)
- If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products online via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue online 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 their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts shut down.
- If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
Essential Legal Pages To Add To Your Website
If you suspect that your website or blog lacks in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.
At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website will help your website keep out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and avoid potential legal issues):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Statement
- Terms Of Use
- Disclaimers
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to consider implementing any of the pages listed below:
- Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general financial advice)
- Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
- Video/Audio Terms (if you allow users to download media on your site)
Disclosure Pages – Types
It’s important to add the right types of disclosure pages to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets site users know that you’re not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you may receive compensation if they purchase through your affiliate link.
- Review Or Sample Copy – Informs site users that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
- Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors know that you were compensated in some way 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.
Adding Legal Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you should consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.
Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Site
If someone prepares the legal content for you in standard web page formatting (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.
We recommend creating a legal folder on your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder on your server and upload pages using FTP)
You can then add a link to your legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu feature …
(Custom WordPress Menu)
Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website
After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar menu (or the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors will be able to access the information from all pages …
(It’s important to display legal information to users on all of your site’s pages)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar using widgets, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
Ready-Made Legal Templates
You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)
To learn more, visit this site:
Alternatively, you can download a package of legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Cut & 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 easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your legal web pages.
The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates include:
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Copyright Notice
- Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
- DMCA Compliance
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
- Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
- ToS & 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 website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described previously.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages
As well as using cut & paste legal templates, you can keep things very simple by using plugins.
Here are some great WordPress plugins worth looking into:
WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin)
If the idea of creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WordPress Legal Pages instead …
This plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you loads of headaches.
Some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages are:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page 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 around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
- Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely 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 other page on your site.
- Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
- Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other WP page.
- Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks.
- Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.
After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will be added to your navigation section …
(WP Legal Pages – Menu)
This lets you create, edit and view your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)
You can create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site dropdown menu)
Select from a number of pre-written 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
Go here to learn more about using this useful plugin:
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress websites and blogs that includes over twenty customizable compliance pages for your digital business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)
Legal Suite Pro 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 Service
- 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 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 license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).
Visit this site for more details:
If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford legal services.
We want your site to be legally safe!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal content, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator Software)
Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate necessary 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 make money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service for third-party services and products that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website isn’t compliant 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 are not providing legal advice here. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.
Legal Resources
Here is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:
- Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
- Federal Trade Commission 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
- US Patent and Trademark Office
- US Copyright Office
In Addition …
- 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
- 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 legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your site.
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