I find registers hard to use.  Here is a thread I started a while back singing the virtues of session.el:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2011-01/msg00758.html

it allows you to jump through all locations in the buffer were you've made a change in reverse chronological order.

I've written jump-char https://github.com/lewang/jump-char to quickly to quickly go to occurrences of a char close by.  Jump-char integrates with ace-jump-mode https://github.com/winterTTr/ace-jump-mode/ , which is better if there are lots of occurrences.

The only time I actually use registers is while recording a macro.

HTH.