• Your credit score is based upon information contained within your credit report. According to FICO, five specific criteria factor into your credit score. Once you learn what those factors are, you can focus on improving your credit in these specific areas and legally raise your credit score.
  
  

Payment History

• Your payment history accounts for 35 percent of your FICO score. Late payments, repossession, judgments, bankruptcy and foreclosure will all lower your score. According to MyFico, making on-time payments each month on all of your credit accounts will help increase your score over time.
  
  

Debt Load

• Another 30 percent of your FICO score measures how much debt you have. FICO calculates your credit utilization ratio, which is the difference between how much credit you have and how much of that credit is used. The more available credit you have, the higher the ratio and the higher your credit score. Your score also looks at how much installment debt you have. As you pay down your overall debt load, your score improves.
  
  

History Length

• The length of your credit history is 15 percent of your FICO score. The longer your credit history, the higher your credit score. Also, closing an account affects your credit utilization ratio since you decrease the amount of available credit. If that account still has a balance, it may cause a drop in your score since you have less credit but still the same amount of debt.
  
  

New Credit

• Ten percent of your FICO score is how much new credit you have on your credit report. Although FICO rewards new credit, if you open a lot of new credit accounts at one time, FICO considers that risky behavior and it could lower your score instead. Also, each new account you open decreases the overall length of your credit history, which may lower your score. According to MyFico, you should only open new accounts when needed.
  
  

Types of Credit

• The final 10 percent of your score reflects the mix of credit found on your report. FICO likes to see a variety of credit, such as a mortgage, car loan, credit cards and lines of credit. However, you should not open additional credit lines just to have a better credit mix since this could do more harm than good to your credit score, according to MyFico.