Additional semantics can be added to links (<link>, <a>, <area>) by specifying the type of link. For instance, the footer of my site now explicitly declares that the e-mail address is that of the page author:

<footer>
  <p>Andreas Rejbrand’s Website</p>
  <p>Copyright © 1997-2014 <a rel="author" href="mailto:andreas@rejbrand.se">Andreas Rejbrand</a></p>
  <p>Page last modified: <% =LastModified %></p>
  <p class="additional">This page is served with alternate stylesheets.
    <a href="https://english.rejbrand.se/rejbrand/news.asp?ItemIndex=165">Read more.</a></p>
</footer>

In addition, the article permalinks are now marked up as such:

<article lang="en" id="ITEM214">
  <header>
    <h2>Web design: Default browser list style</h2>
    <dl class="metadata" lang="sv">
      <dt>Notis</dt>
      <dd><a rel="bookmark" href="article.asp?ItemIndex=214">214</a></dd>
      <dt>Datum</dt>
      <dd><time>2014-11-19</time></dd>
    </dl>
  </header>
  <p>Some time ago, I <a href="article.asp?ItemIndex=166">noticed</a> that [...]</p>
</article>

Link types are not new to HTML5, although the semantics has been clarified in HTML5.