Within the AdS/CFT correspondence, for description of \mathcal{N}=4N=4 super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions one needs not only low-energy supergravity on AdS_5
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but also the whole infinite tower of massive Kaluza-Klein (KK) states on AdS_5\times
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×S_5
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which appear after the KK-compactification on five-dimensional sphere. The latter aspect is usually ignored in phenomenological AdS/QCD models. The emerging massive 5D fields on AdS_5
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are dual to higher-dimensional operators in 4D gauge theory, with masses being known polynomial functions of canonical dimensions of these operators. Motivated by this observation, we propose to calculate the spectrum of radially excited hadrons in bottom-up holographic QCD models as spectrum of zero KK modes of massive 5D fields dual to higher dimensional operators in QCD. A relevant physical motivation is suggested. The radial states with growing masses are then enumerated by growing dimensions of interpolating QCD operators. We tested the proposal in the Soft Wall and Hard Wall holographic models in the sector of light mesons. The spectrum of Soft Wall model turns out to be unchanged in the new description. But in the Hard Wall model, our approach is shown to lead to a much better phenomenological spectrum of vector radial excitations than the traditional description.