Shortcut for highlighting text?

I often need to highlight words/phrases in a Pages document, I find the process extremely cumbersome. I'm wondering if there's an easier way to do it that I haven't uncovered.

Currently, I select the text to be highlighted. In the format section, I choose Style, the little dropdown w/the gear (next to bold, italics, underline); click on the color wheel in the text background section, and then choose a color. That's an awful lot of steps to do each time I want to highlight.

Is there an easier way to do this? I'd love to set up a keyboard shortcut for this but since there doesn't seem to be a menu item for highlighting, I don't know if it's possible.

Thank you!