Another redirection question

Dear All, sorry for this repeat question-newbie of course.
I have a main site and a second subsite, the subsite deals with a specific area of the main site. The name, home page is clearly providing quick access to info for businesses (hopefully), basically its only 1 layer deep providing articles directly on the main page. (by the way - im a clutz when it comes to web philosophy)
I had thought to do a simple redirect to my main site as the info is on mainsite but "buried". It now seems better sense to use the child site and have direct links to the main site rather than a redirect. The question is, if i have articles etc where im being hit, do i do a straight redirect to the mainsite, or simply set up a link through system. Im sorry if this is vague or youve heard this a million times. some idea where to look- i have been reading up - but its confusing with so many conflicting ideas and penalties by search engines etc....
regards... and thanks

Search engines don't like redirects.
From what I've heard, most won't even follow the redirect.

Would you be kind to show us

i) Where you want to make redirect from and
ii) Where you want to redirect to?