官方css5.5,CQ5.5 Components with CSS script

The STYLE tag, according to the w3c recommendation, allows authors to put style sheet rules in the head of the document. HTML permits any number of STYLE elements in the HEAD section of a document, though it is not explicitly stated that you shouldn't be adding it elsewhere in the document.

Going by the standards, validators would fail this test case as HTML DTD expects it to be within the HEAD section. And that is exactly the reason why you get the error mentioned in your question. But then, you would still get the expected result because almost all the modern browsers support it anyway.

If you are to follow the best practices, it is advisable to avoid specifying the styles within the component's JSP because

If a component is added to the page multiple times, the same css would be added in multiple locations in the page.

It is invalid markup as per the DTD.

It would become difficult to maintain and manage, and any change

requires the developer to look at multiple locations.

It is ugly.

One way to work around this is using the Client-side HTML library(clientlibs) feature provided by CQ5(AEM). This allows you to organize your component specific styles and scripts within the corresponding clientlibrary folders and using the cq:includeClientLib tag you can include them in your JSP.

But this would include a or at the corresponding location where the cq:includeClientLib is used, which again is an invalid markup according to the w3c validator. Also, adding the component multiple times in the same page, leads to inclusion of multiple link tags in the document.

To overcome this, you could use the embed feature available in clientlibs to embed all the component specific client libraries of your project into another clientlibrary within your design folder present in /etc/designs. Then you can include the embedded clientlib in your page's head section along with your projects global clientlibs. This makes sure that all your component specific styles are added only once, as well as access is restricted to application specific folders to the end users as your files are delivered from /etc and not /apps.

For more on creating and using Client-Side HTML Libraries, refer this doc.