Redirecting .edu subdomains to our site or taking the link, what's more valuable?

[Dom441]

We have a relationship built through a service we offer to universities to be issued a .edu subdomain that we could redirect to our landing page relevant to that school. The other option is having a link from their website to that same page.

My first question is, what would be more valuable? Can you pass domain authority by redirecting a subdomain to a subdirectory in my root domain? Or would simply passing the link equity from a page in their root domain to our page pass enough value?

My second question is, if creating a subdomain with a redirect is much more valuable, what is the best process for this? Would we simply have their webmaster create the subdomain for us an have them put a 301 redirect to our page? Is this getting in the greyer hat area?

Thanks guys!

[RyanPurkey]

I would recommend getting the link from their root domain(s) to the service hosted on your own domain as that wold most likely be more valuable.  This would do a few things.

1. Referral visits. You could see pretty quickly how many people are coming from the university site to your site using the link.
2. Endorsement strength. By having the link and university's explanation of your service on their site, they're providing additional trust based on people's past interactions with the university. This is partially an SEO thing, but also a conversion factor, i.e., "I trust my Uni's opinion so this is probably a worthwhile service."
3. Simpler. You'll be managing fewer domains (just you're own) and won't have to worry about technical changes on the uni's side regarding the redirection and subdomain.

There's all that, plust the newly created subdomain wouldn't carry nearly as much trust and authority as the root domain. It's why Wordpress.org doesn't get in trouble in Google if someone creates: reallyspammysite.wordpress.org.  Hope that clears it up. If someone else has compelling reasons for the other method, I'll let them expand on it.