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SSH-key are used a lot in many applications such as git, to access an account without the need for username and password.
Once created you can log in to the shell using your username and password for the first time. In order to set up ssh-key based authentication you just need to add your public key to the authorized_keys file in the .ssh folder.
First this guide will show you how to do that and in the second part there will be links on how to generate an ssh-key pair for those who want one.
Assuming you are log into your shell and you see <YourName>$, press ls -a to show all the items in your home directory. Notice the .ssh folder, that is the one we want. Press cd .ssh to change into it and press again ls to see the authorized_keys file that we were looking for.