Structured data is a way to label website content so search engines can interpret it accurately, enabling rich results and improved visibility in search engine results. It's essential for modern web development as it helps machines understand content like humans do, making content machine-readable, predictable, and interoperable. Google recommends using JSON-LD format, which separates content generation from the frontend, aligning well with Strapi's API-first approach. Implementing structured data in Strapi requires careful planning to create an organized, reusable content ecosystem, including setting up content types, creating structured data with JSON-LD, and integrating analytics tools. Properly implemented structured data can help search engines better understand and display content, enabling rich results, knowledge panels, and featured snippets, while also improving indexing accuracy, query matching, crawl efficiency, and contextual understanding.