I no longer use vimium, I use vimium-c, but these should work in both, add these to your custom mappings - you'd thank me later:

    map gf LinkHints.activateOpenInNewTab count=999999
    map go LinkHints.click direct="focused" mode="newtab-active"
    map gb LinkHints.click direct="focused" mode="newtab"

    map gm toggleMuteTab
    

I would typically do something like this - I'd press "/", search for an occurence, it navigates to one, if it's a link, pressing "go" - opens it in a new tab, "gb" - opens it without switching to it. I promise you, you'd love this.

Share your interesting options.