I always give people advice based on my experience and what I have seen.
You may have read on popular SEO blogs, " Profile links are Blackhat tactics and don't work" etc etc etc. But that's not true.
If you want to outrank your competitors, you have to check, from where their links come from. If they have quality, content based links, then you can't outrank them with profile links.
But, In some niches, getting links from authority sites is not possible.
Like: If you are selling "Panish enlargement pills", No reputable health sites will link you or your competitors. So all of your niche partners will do profile link building, blog comments, wikis, article submission, web 2.0, PBN to outrank each other. And you have to follow the same technique to outrank them. If you keep waiting for a reputed health site to rank to your XXX review page. This never going to happen and you will sit at the bottom and your competitors will keep enjoying the rank and sales.
The people sitting on the first page (top 5) of my targeted keywords (It's kinda same as above) have 80-90% profile links. And most of them are from Chinese sites. They are enjoying top ranking and sales.
It may happen some day, Google will punish them and down rank them. But, till then, they will be enjoying the sales.
So, there is nothing, completely wrong or completely right in SEO business. We all are trying to outrank our competitors. That's all.
Do some research on your competitor's backlinks profile. And then you decide what type of links you need to outrank them.
