Your credit score is a long-term view of your use of credit. Most credit problems, such as late payments or nonpayment of debt, must be removed after seven years, but some types of bankruptcy stay on your credit report for 10 years. Student loans can be there even longer; some may stay on until paid in full or forgiven.

The time it takes to fix a problem will depend upon what is negatively affecting your credit score. If credit information owned by someone else is harming your score, for example, removal of that information could result in almost instant repair once you get the error corrected. But you shouldn't expect a quick resolution; for most people who want to fix their credit score, it's not that simple. Here are five steps to improving your score.

Your first step in attempting to fix your credit score requires that you get the facts. You can do that by ordering a free credit report from all three of the credit bureaus: Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. You are limited to one free report a year from each bureau, which you can order at AnnualCreditReport.com. But it is a good idea to order them throughout the year. Ordering one report immediately and then one in four months and the third in eight months will allow you to order a report every four months for free.

If this is your first time looking at your reports, order a free one from Experian using the link above and then get your TransUnion and Equifax reports for free by signing up at CreditKarma.com. Membership at this website is free, and so are the reports; there isn't any kind of monthly fee (see Why Credit Karma Is Free & How It Makes Money). You definitely want to look at all three reports as quickly as possible to be sure they are accurate. (To find out what a credit report will tell you, read What's on a Consumer Credit Report?)

You may find errors on your report, such as payments being late when you were not late, or a credit card shown as yours that is not yours. Mistakes like these can drag down your credit score. There are several key things to look at that will help you identify the problems:

• Personal information – Make sure the names and addresses reported match your personal history. Sometimes the credit reports of people with the same or similar names get combined incorrectly; having your report tied to that of someone with bad credit can lower your score. To correct an error you need to document what is wrong and send a letter to the credit bureaus. This can be a quick fix if all the negative information belongs to someone other than you, but proving that may take some time.

• Account Information – Carefully check all accounts listed and make sure they are actually accounts that you have opened. If you find an account in your name that you did not open, contact the credit bureaus, explain the fraud and ask that a fraud alert be put on your account. Then contact the card-issuing company to find out more details about the account. The fact that it is on your report means it is likely that someone used your Social Security number in opening that account. Also be sure that the balance information and payment history for each account is accurate. If any information is inaccurate, you will need proof of the correct information and you will have to start a dispute with the credit bureau to ask that the wrong information is corrected. For more detailed advice on this, see How to Dispute Errors on Your Credit Report.

• Collections – If there are collections on your credit report, check to be sure there are not multiple reports of the same unpaid bills. Collection accounts are bought and sold, so the same information could be reported by more than one agency, which would make your credit history look worse than it is. Dispute the information and send documentation to prove the debt is listed more than once.

• Public Records – Negative information from public records can include bankruptcies, civil judgments or foreclosures. Bankruptcies can be on the report for seven to 10 years, but all other public records must be removed after seven years. If the public record on your report is older than is allowed, dispute the information with the credit bureau and send documentation to prove that the debt is too old and should no longer be on the report.

If you have a past due account and have the cash to pay it off, try negotiating with the creditor by offering to pay the balance in full if it will remove the information from your credit report. If not, try getting the company to make the debt paid as agreed. Getting the negative information completely off your report is best, but a creditor may not be willing to do that. Make sure you get any agreement in writing before making the payment.

If your account shows non-payments for a couple of months, but you can prove the problem was caused by a hardship, you might be able to ask your creditor for a goodwill adjustment. If you were injured and in the hospital or rehabilitation for a couple of months, for example, you might not have had the money (or been in physically healthy enough) to pay that bill. Write to your creditor, explain the hardship and provide proof. Ask if the company would consider a goodwill adjustment erasing the late payment history on your credit report. Your payments will need to be up-to-date to succeed in getting this adjustment.

Check your credit reports to be sure they accurately reflect your credit limits. Then add up all the credit limits in one column and all the outstanding debt in another. For instance, you could have $10,000 in total credit limits and $4,000 in total debt, which would mean you are using 40% ($4,000/$10,000) of your available credit limits.

It's best to keep your debt-to-credit ratio 30% or lower – the lower the better, says Anthony Sprauve, former director of public relations for FICO, one of the key credit score companies.

You can make your credit utilization look better than it is by making your payments just before your statement is sent, rather than waiting until it goes out. Most credit card companies report your balance at the same time that they send a statement, and the balance reported to the credit bureaus is the statement balance. If, for example, your statement goes out on the fifteenth of the month, as long as you have the money on hand, pay your bill early so the money will arrive prior to the statement being sent out – let's say the thirteenth of the month. That way your outstanding credit balance reported on the statement and to the credit bureaus will be lower.

Even if you pay your bills on time, in full, every month, the credit bureau will only see the statement balance, which can make it look like you are carrying more debt than you are.

A factor that affects your credit score is the number of credit cards you have with open balances. Having a lot of small balances lowers your score. So if you have VISA, MasterCard and American Express cards that you alternate using each month, for example, you could end up with three cards that all have low balances – perhaps under $100.

The solution to improve your credit score is to gather up all those credit cards on which you have small balances and pay them off, says John Ulzheimer of Credit Sesame and former credit expert for FICO and Equifax. Then consolidate how you use them.

You can fix your credit score yourself for free. It does require some legwork and possibly rethinking how you use your credit cards, but that higher credit score will help you get better interest offers and lower your cost of credit. For a tutorial on managing both your credit and your debt, see Credit and Debt Management.