The emphasis here is on "people cannot see the content exchanged between the client and the server". And this focus on privacy is good. But it’s also worth noticing that another key benefit from TLS is data integrity. People cannot read the content, but they also cannot tamper with it, which gives you the guarantee that the content you load is the content sent by the server you trust (and trust is a very important idea here) and nobody was able to alter it on its way between both ends.
Richard Uie
"Live and learn" should have been "LEARN or DIE."
"It also helps with SEO (search engine optimization)..."
Only because Mother Google says so...today. This isn't so much an optimization as a bribe from Google to encourage wider adoption of HTTPS. As more sites move to HTTPS, the value of this ranking boost will decrease. Also, this is as far as I know a Google-only benefit - not a general-SEO improvement (as if anyone cares what any search engine other than Google thinks).