Structured data provides search engines with key information about a website and its content, helping improve website rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) through rich snippets that enhance user experience and click-through-rate. It is organized in a standardized format, making it easy for computers to process, ideal for use on the web. Structured data can be used to feature specific information on search engines, such as list of steps in a how-to guide, and provides search engines with key information about a website's content. There are different types of structured data, including semi-structured data like HTML code, and various formats like JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa for embedding Schema.org markup. Google recommends using JSON-LD due to its ability to be loaded asynchronously without impacting page performance.