Disallowing WP 'author' page archives

[Netrepid]

Hey Mozzers. I want to block my author archive pages, but not the primary page of each author. For example, I want to keep /author/jbentz/ but get rid of /author/jbentz/page/4/.

Can I do that in robots by using a * where the author name would be populated. '

So, basically... my robots file would include something like this...

Disallow: /author/*/page/

Will this work for my intended goal... or will this just disallow all of my author pages?

[Sheena_Schleicher]

Wildcard placements are always tricky, so be sure you test it in GWT's robots file tester. You can also look into adding meta noindex, rel next/prev, or canonical tags to those pages.

I hope this helps!

[evolvingSEO]

By block, I assume you mean not index them?

If you're using Yoast, all you need to do is select "noindex subpages of archives" under the Titles & Meta menu.

So if simply not indexing is the desired result, that's the easiest bet - and then you will not index all other subpages such as /category/page/2/ etc