How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

One of the worst things that can happen to a business owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

Online laws and regulations are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not prevent you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, then you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure 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.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws affect several online business activities, including:

• Any form of advertising, like contextual advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend web applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in various advertising or online merchant networks.

You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.

In this guide, we discuss the importance of having a legally compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your website.

Does Your Site Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is located.

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider for a moment what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A customer has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you will do with it.
• Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you are promoting and will derive a sales commission if visitors buy it.
• You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims the testimonials on your site are false and decides to sue you.
• You did not disclose that you were given a free copy in your product review.
• Your website contains adult-related information and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider too 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 (including credit card info to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes 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 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 violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 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 a target of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With Third-Party Services

Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.

You must let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you engage with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Earning revenue with your blog with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

And even promoting your site via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information products with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will be required to add legal pages to your site before your products are approved for sale in their networks …

(Policy requirements for vendors selling via ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically 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 is not physically located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by making sure that your site is compliant with all FTC guidelines.

You can find many online resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide links to resources to some of these at the end of this article …

(It’s important to word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to develop applications for your site users, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or use Google AdWords 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 shut down.
• If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies)

Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance

If your web site falls short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and external service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into adding one or more of these compliance pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general content about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets readers know that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors be aware that you may be compensated if they buy through your affiliate links.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets visitors be aware that you have received a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets readers know that you have been 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Content To Your Website

Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this prepared, there are several ways to add them to your website.

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

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

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

You can then add a link to your legal pages in WordPress using custom links in your menu administration …

(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 insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar menu (or the footer of your website) to ensure that users will be able to access the information from all pages …

(Display links to your legal pages to visitors on all of your site’s pages)

We have created a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer in WordPress here:

• How To Add Widgets To WordPress

Using Ready-Made Legal Templates

You can easily find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Go here for more info:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can download a package of cut and paste legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)

These templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick search and replace to insert your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• 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 on your website for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described previously.

Go here to learn more:

• Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

As well as using legal templates, you can simplify things by using a plugin.

Here are some great WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WP Legal Pages Plugin)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider installing WP Legal Pages …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you many headaches.

Here are just some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages:

• 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 – You can set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. When a user agrees to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will be added to your WordPress dashboard area …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate/review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

Select from a number of pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress 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

To learn more this handy plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over 20 customizable legal templates for your online presence …

More info:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers 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 plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing some kind of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a legal expert.

We want your site to be legally protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal templates, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to easily generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service required by 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or endorsing 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 are not offering legal advice on our website. We strongly advise you 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 concerning your specific business.

Resources

Here is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what your website may require to remain compliant and meet legal obligations:

• 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 – 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

Additionally …

• 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
• 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

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