GEEK QUEEN
Legal Pages You Need NOW!
Jenny Marsden • Jan 21, 2020
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legal pages every website must have!
Legal pages should be a high priority for you if you are committed to protecting your website or blog.
Depending on what stage you’re at in your business and what type of website you have, you might have to have a specific policy that others don’t. In general however, there are a few legal pages that every website should have in order to be legally compliant.
what legal pages do you need?
1. A Privacy Policy & Cookie Policy
I have heard a lot of talk about how operating a business in Australia means you don't have to comply with GDPR for example. That is not true. If anyone from the EU visits your website, they have the right to these new privacy laws. So don't stick your head in the sand and think that because your business is outside of Europe (or California now with the CCPA coming into effect) that you get a pass on these laws.
If you serve content to these area's you need to abide by these laws.
Considering you can't control who see's your content, by default you need to comply.
You may choose to split your Privacy and Cookie policy pages however usually you wouldn't be in trouble for having both on the one page. Please ensure they are well defined and clearly different policies though.
2. Website Terms and Conditions Of Use
The role of a Website Terms and Conditions of Use is to protect yourself and your business from the use of any content on your website. Despite your best efforts we all make mistakes and the simplest thing misinterpreted by a reader could put you in really hot water.
Lets say you have a cooking blog and your list of ingredients for a recipe has an item that unbeknown to you contains traces of nuts. Can you imaging how badly that could end up for someone with an allergic child! Lets hope this would never happen, however if it does, you need to protect yourself from a potentially significant lawsuit.
3. Disclaimer for Affiliate Links / User Submitted Content
With blogging getting more and more competitive, the latest surge in a lot of blogs is guest related content. IE Guest blogging. While you may read every post before it is set live, a disclaimer over any guest posts will mean that you are covered should anything of the content, images or links NOT be legally used. Lets say a guest blogger uses a photo that they took off anther blog, you don't want to be legally liable for any breach of copy-write that photo might have.
Most bloggers also use affiliate links which means that they earn a commission from directing you to products and/or services via links. I use this myself. I don't earn much money from it but it does enable me to cover some of the cost of my ongoing training.
Most bloggers will only direct you to something they have either used or know to be good quality and value, however you need to protect yourself and advise your clients that some products you recommend you will be paid for. See my affiliate disclaimer statement
here.
How do you get legal pages
In the past to obtain legal pages for your website you would have had to pay your solicitor or lawyer to draw them up at great expense for yourself. These days there are a few reliable and affordable website where you can get legal pages for your website.
Of course you should ensure you actually read the legalese
and make sure they are suitable for your website before you use them.
The introduction of GDPR a few years ago has meant that a few businesses who supply legal pages have risen to the top of the heap.
Option 1 - The Contract Shop
The Contract Shop
can provide you with a Terms & Conditions AND a Privacy Policy
for $277 USD. They can also supply a blog disclaimer
(which includes a disclaimer for affiliate links etc) for only $27.00 USD. That would make it just under $300 USD and while I know you are choking on your coffee right now, that's not expensive in the overall scheme of things!
They do also have packages, however these are primarily for design, coaching and artistic businesses and in my mind a little expensive (mostly considering our rubbish AUD exchange rate).
Option 2 - The Self Guru
Amira from The Self Guru is a lawyer herself and has website legal packages
available for $180 USD which includes a Terms and Conditions of Use, GDPR & CCPA compliant Privacy Policy and a Disclaimer Template.
Now I have to say that Amira has fully embraced Convert Kit
and is the master of the "and there's more...." so this page goes on forever. However if the "I Want It" button on the bottom of your screen doesn't show just scroll to the end of the page and work your way back up for the purchase button. Personally these are the legal docs I use for my website. She does include quite a lot of extra's like the Affiliate Disclaimer, Sponsored Posts Disclaimer & a Fair Use Disclaimer so you do get a lot for your money here.
Your responsibility
It is no longer OK just to have these pages on your website. A recent law suit in the US ruled that you have to have visible links to these pages and compliance can't just be inferred.
A lot of websites may have these page links visible via their site map but nowhere else
and that is no longer acceptable.
Sure you don't want to take up valuable header menu space with these links, however ALWAYS link to them in the footer of your website at the very least. This is where most people will look to find them and you should be proud of the fact that you are protecting your livelihood.
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About Jenny
I started my IT career in Database Administration and .Net coding. While I LOVED that work, I realised very quickly that I also wanted a life. To be a top end coder or DB Admin, you have to comit your downtime to constantly learning and evolving and while that is also something I love, I wanted it to be my work and not my life. So I morphed my love of design with my knowledge of all things SEO and moved into building small business websites.
Why small business websites? I'm a small business myself and I know how hard it can be so I wanted to give my clients a great service, with an approachable point of contact where no question was a "stupid question".
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