How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking the law, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any third-party companies whose products or services you are offering or endorsing?

As the digital era continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital that you try to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an important factor in your business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory 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 to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau)

These laws affect several online business activities, including:

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

If your site does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could disapprove your applications, and you will not be allowed into a number of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

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

The purpose of this guide is to make you aware that your website or blog(s) may be subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern online business practices, the importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be recommending on your website, and that there are easy solutions that can help your online properties become fully compliant, such as the plugins that we discuss further below.

Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all laws wherever you do business.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• Someone has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you will do with their details.
• Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their site.
• You haven’t advised your visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing that you will get paid a financial benefit if they end up purchasing via your link.
• You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Visitors claim that your testimonials are all fake and decide to sue you.
• You have not disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site includes adult information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider too these real case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their 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 information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, 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 infringed 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 entirely to the Google program with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could easily be exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdWords Advertiser
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

it’s important to make sure that your website is fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services

Compliance with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.

You must let your site users know that your website complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you engage with online.

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 blogs with Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

And even promoting your services using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell digital products through companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add certain legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale in their network …

(Policy requirements for vendors selling via ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with FTC guidelines.

There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and 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 laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

If you plan to create apps for your website, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …

(Social networking apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services online via affiliate marketing, or generating revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you have ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance

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

Adding the following compliance pages to your site should help your business stay out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and external service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):

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

As well as the pages above, you may want to consider including one or more of these legal pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides content about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of web content disclosure is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets site users be aware that you’re not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Informs your visitors that you will derive some form of financial benefit if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate link.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets site users know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Informs visitors that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets users know 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.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site

Ideally, you should consult your lawyer and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

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

(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) so that users can access the information from every page …

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

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu, refer to this tutorial:

• Using Widgets In WordPress

Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more details, go here:

• Find Legal Forms – Legal forms

Another option is to download a package of legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (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 web pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described earlier.

Go here for more details:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – Plugins

In addition to using copy & paste legal templates, another option is to use a plugin.

Here are some plugins for WordPress websites and blogs that you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WP Legal Pages)

If creating legal pages manually feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages instead …

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

Some of the benefits of using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Pre-written Templates – 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 need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin 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 other WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks only when user agrees to your terms.
• New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your main WP dashboard area …

(WP 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 Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, niche websites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Type of Site drop down menu)

Select from a number of pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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

Visit the plugin website to learn more about using this plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users containing over 20 customizable compliance templates for your digital business …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(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 of Service
• 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 the plugin on all of your websites.

To learn more, visit this website:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring lawyers to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some form of basic legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your website to be protected!

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

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you are making money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service and guidelines required by third-party sites that you may decide to promote or recommend 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to comply 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 – 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

Additionally …

• 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

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add legal pages to your site using inexpensive legal resources and WordPress plugins.

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